Embodied psychedelic semiosis

Vít Pokorný

Transdisciplinary research of psychedelic experiences (PE)

Ethnography: autoethnography

description of socio-cultural conditions

Post-phenomenology:description of the invarian structure of the phenomenal field of PE

beyond the ntentional analysis

Enactive cognitive science:Description of the enactive domain

Cognition as an interactive dialogue with the environment

Biosemiotics:From biosphere to semiosphere

Semiotic niche – umwelt – mittwelt - semiosphere

Psychedelic experiences

PEs are inducedby psychedelicsubstances (LSD-25, Psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, Ketamin, Mescalin, and many others) thatalter the brain functioning

Main features:specific global – „hallucinatory“ – quality

Some bodily and cognitive processes are intensified, some are diminished

Flooding – overwhelming and absorbent qualityPerceptual transformations

Bodily and emotional arousalWavelike quality

Oscilatory qualityInflation of imagination

Dissolution of ego – no control, happening, part-aspectHyper awareness

What is hallucination? (M.Merleau-Ponty, the Phenomenology of Perception, part II/III, §§ 41-43)

Normal system of appearances:Explicity

Bodily fullnessReal presenceArticulation

Self-awarenessFull ownership

PerceptionsJudgements

I know what I am doing

Hallucinatory system of appearences:Disassembling of reality

Quasi-realityIllusory, dreamlike presence

ImplicitInarticulatedLacks fullness

Neither perception, nor judgementDeceptions

Full ownership is deniedI cease to know what I am doing

Disconnection from other phenomenaNot part of the world

SHIFT

The correction of Merleu-Ponty‘s analysis

Psychedelic „hallucinations“:OverarticulatedOverdetermined

Altered perceptionsSynesthesia

SyncognitionAlertness

HyperawarenessGlobal interconnectedness

Altered reality

Agreement with M.-P.:Perceptions and hallucinations are

modalities of the primordialfunction

Partly dreamlike – I am aware ofthem, but I don‘t create them and

become an aspectinstead of the center of the

phenomenal fieldLoss of control

The primordial function:wild being, prepredicative consciouness, prelogical, semiotic function (Kristeva), semiotic continuum

(Lotman), semiosphere, intercorporeality or silent language (Merleau-Ponty)

The normal system ofappearances:

the prepredicative level stayshiddena territory coded by habits, sedimentations, regular functionalloopscovered and governed by predicative, self-aware agentsymbolic function (Kristeva) centred on the unitary subjectdistance and duality

Phase shiftDeterritorialization

The psychedelic system ofappearances:

the prepredicative level becomesmanifesta deteritorialization takes place transforming sedimented regularitiesinto a wawelike stream of events thathappen to me independently of my self-controlthe experiences lose the „I“ center immersion and non-duality

The deterritorialization (Deleuze)

Phenomenally:The experiental field becomes liquid, dreamlike, vibratory, oscilatory, dissolves into lines ofmovements and series of continous transformations, everything permeates everything else

Flood, stream, overwhelming quality, disintegration of the subject, loss of the sense of agency(Gallagher)

The neurochemical breakdown:Blood-brain barrier normally doesn’t allow for neurotransmitters to travel between the

circulating blood and the brain extracellular fluid. Psychedelics make this barrier penetrable, enable the rise in the level of neurotransmitters, esp. serotonin (psychedelic molecules are

analogues of neurotransmitters and bind to them, thus enhancing their activity). Decrease in some brain functions follows – regulation of the direct awareness and attention, and

filtering of stimuli (system of restriction related to the fight and flight attitude), increasein other functions – basically the global connectivity of the brain which causes decrease

in specialisation of different brain areas and cessation of the filtering systems.

A road to biosemiotics

Merleau-Ponty (PoP, Le Nature):Every hallucination is related to our own

bodyBody is the natural symbolism – the body

enters the world and the world entersthe body

Expressivity of the bodyA moving bodily organ is already a

language – it is a question and an answerA raw and wild spirit under all the

cultureLogos of nature under the logos of

languageLogos before language, latent sense, a

mythos as the origin of manifest language

The biosphere (A. Weber, Alles Fühlt, 2008):

We are a part of biosphere.Actors in the extensive network

In symbiosis with uncomprehesible big ecosystem.

Inextricably in the worldA men is unthinkable with his symbionts.

A subject is a biotop.Streams of the world pass through us and we

throug them.An „I“ is no stable center, it emerges in contact

with the world.

The semiosphere

J. Hoffmeyer, The Global semiosphere, 1994:Ecosystem dynamics, therefore, shall have to include a proper understanding of the semiotic networks operative in ecosystems. Surprisingly then, from a biosemiotic point of view the biosphere appears as a reductionist category which will have to be understood in the light of the yet more comprehensive

category of the semiosphere.

Y. Lotman, On the semiosphere, 2005/1984:Every monosemantic system is immersed in the semiosphere, in the semiotic continuum

No semiosis can happen outside the semiosphereEvery individual system has its boundaries, a film whos function is to penetrate, filtrate and

transform the outer into the inner – requires chaotic, disorganised, amorphic peripheryPrecondition of semiosis – transcending the boundaries, an interplay between different systems and

subsystems, constant semiotic invasion into other structures (domains, niches)

K. Kull, On semiosis, Umwelt and semiosphere, 1998:Semiosis – a process of translation, which makes a copy of a text, suitable to replace the original text, but is different

from it.Two types of recognition processes: 1) parts of the original text are recognized and new structures are build

(isomorphism); 2) recognition process that starts the translation process.The translator includes memory and itself is a text, i.e. the result of translationA semiosis always requires previous semiosis which produces the translator

A semiosis is historical and includes ability of learning – any text to be translated should be recognized by a previoustext and the outcome of translation will influence the recognition process in suceeding generations of translation.

G. Bateson, Angels Fear, 1987 interpreted by J. Hoffmeyer:Does something like a question exist in the biological realm?

Unfertilised frog egg – a question to be answered by the spermatozoonNor the egg, neither the spermatozoon‘s DNA contains needed information

The point of entry of the spermatozoon is the answer to the eggs latent questionThe egg –complicated structure with the two billions years of evolutionary history-

Its internal structure – historically established regularity which gives meaning to the answer provided by the positionof the entering spermatozoon

The semiosis

Psychedelic semiosis

The cessation (deterritorialazation) of socio-cultural, „ego“ centered habituality opens up thebrain-consciousness to the de-restricted, unfiltered flow of bio-information processing thus

allowing for the spectrum of psychedelic experiences such as:

Consciousness of the Oceanic unityRecollection of birth

Scanning of the evolutionary memoryMorphing into different organisms

Seeing invisible patternsCommunication of interdimensional beings

Eidetical experiencesAnd other kinds of strangness and alienation from normal human form