Conference

Pre ICPR Events

About

Conference

Pre ICPR Events

About

Sue Blackmore, PhD

University of Plymouth

Speaker Bio

Sue Blackmore is a psychologist, lecturer and writer best known for The Meme Machine (1999) and the textbook Consciousness: An Introduction (4th Edition due 2024). She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth, UK. Her research interests includes memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, NDEs, OBEs, free will, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, drugs, psychedelics, spirituality and meditation. She has written over fifteen books, more than sixty academic papers and articles for many magazines and newspapers.

ICPR 2024 Abstract

Consciousness, self, and psychedelic insights

What is it like to be me tripping? Why do ‘I’ and my world change and even disappear?

The science of consciousness studies ought to help, with its famous question, ‘What is it like to bea bat? Yet all current theories face problems and the field is mired in confusion. I suggest a different approach to consciousness. Rather than assuming that physical things can be subjects of experience, I suggest that only models or representations can be – a kind of panpsychism of mental models.

If we ask, ‘what is it like being a mental model?’ the answer is whatever that model says it is like, whether that’s a bat’s model of the world or a human model of an illusory ‘self’ who lives inside its body and has consciousness and free will. Thismeans we need not solve the ‘hard problem’ of how subjective consciousness arises from an objective brain because it doesn’t. Instead, we ask, ‘what models is this system building?’ 

Neuroscience already tells us that LSD and psilocybin weaken long-range connections and disrupt the default mode network which is involved in self-modelling. When this falls apart so does the illusion of a separate self, whether that is terrifying or akin to a mystical experience.  Whether this approach is too obvious to be worth thinking about, or just plain wrong, I would like to explore its possible relevance to psychedelic experience and the validity of psychedelic insights.

© 2007-2024 ICPR by OPEN Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
© 2007-2024 ICPR by OPEN Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
© 2007-2024 ICPR by OPEN Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands