[NhanH]

Just to play devil's advocate here, I can claim that our ordinary state of consciousness is the most legitimate one (the one that is closest to reality, if there is such thing as objective reality), or at the very least the most useful one - otherwise we would have evolved for the different state of consciousness. The burden of proof would be on you to justify that the altered state of consciousness is indeed more in line with reality.

Of course, this comes with the premise that consciousness is a necessity. And indeed, our needs nowadays might require a different state of consciousness, now that the very basic survival needs are generally fulfilled.

[gnosis]

"I can claim that our ordinary state of consciousness is the most legitimate one (the one that is closest to reality, if there is such thing as objective reality), or at the very least the most useful one - otherwise we would have evolved for the different state of consciousness."

Is your view that that we have evolved for the ordinary state of consciousness a view that was made and evaluated in an ordinary state of consciousness? Should its worth be evaluated in an ordinary state of consciousness? How should we decide if it's valid? Why should something that is considered "most useful" be more valid than something that is considered "less useful"?

An ant's view of the a human city may be very useful to it in terms of its own survival and that of its colony, but few would argue that it understands a human city on as profound and deep a level as a human would. Now, which of these views are "right" or "valid"?

As for what's "in line with reality", would you consider a Picasso painting to be worthless compared to a photograph because the former is not very realistic compared to the latter? What about a song? Is the "in line with reality" standard applicable to a joke? (Sure, there are some jokes with are "funny because they're true", but that standard does not really apply to puns or jokes that rely on surprise for their effect. Are they worthless?) What about poetry? What about the value of a kiss?

Finally, speaking of evolution, Terrence McKenna conjectured that human intelligence and evolution may have been influenced by an encouter with psychedelic mushrooms, whose spores were hardy enough to survive a long interstellar journey to earth, and whose consumption gave human ancestors an enormous amount of novel information.

[muxxa]

Re. Terrece McKenna, Interstellar spores & evolution.

This is a pretty clear indication to me that psychedelic inspired insights are merely the concatenation by the mind of unrelated concepts where the result is definitely not more than the sum of the parts.

Some simple refutations that spring easily to mind:

- mushrooms have the same type of DNA as the rest of earth's living creatures, no?

- information cannot be transmitted in a chemical compound. You can have a trip by ingesting the psychoactive compound extracted from magic mushrooms.

- no other animals were enlightened or had their evolution enhanced, why only us?

While it is attractive and intriguing to believe that hallucinogens open the doors to perception and reveal a larger reality, I believe that it is much more likely that the modeling/simulating machine that is your brain is conjuring that impression in a way that is, by definition, seamlessly undetectable and wholly convincing to that same brain.

[NhanH]

"Is your view that that we have evolved for the ordinary state of consciousness a view that was made and evaluated in an ordinary state of consciousness? Should its worth be evaluated in an ordinary state of consciousness? How should we decide if it's valid? Why should something that is considered "most useful" be more valid than something that is considered "less useful"?"

Because the other states of consciousness, for one reason or another, had disappeared. Though it's entirely possible that many different states of consciousness exist in the human population now.

I interpreted the original post of yours as saying "altered consciousness helps us to see through the smoke of our normal/ordinary consciousness, and help us to perceive reality as it is (or at least, with less smoke)". Hence the reply was concerned with the similar idea. And with this interpretation, the Picasso's analogy doesn't hold: indeed, Picasso painting is great not because it's an accurate depiction of reality, but because it's a different one (in a great way). The value of his works lies in his interpretation of reality, and not the accuracy in replicate reality.

Now, if you meant that no state of consciousness necessary perceives reality objectively better than the others, just merely different, and they would have different values on their own - I certainly can't disagree on this.

[anigbrowl]

The ordinary state of consciousness is definitely the most useful one, subject to a certain amount of path-dependency. But equally the fact that your ordinary routine of eating, sleeping, going to work etc. is the most useful one doesn't mean that fasting, staying up all night, or taking a vacation are lacking in value. You were dead right with your other comment about how a Picasso picture is an interpretation of reality rather than a depiction of it, while recognizing that we can learn a lot from considering other interpretations.

You should read a book called The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind by Julian Jaynes, I think you'd like it a good deal.