Consciousness

• seCtIon FIVe: BoRDeRLAnDs
  A psychological and neurobiological review of ASCs (Vaitl
  et al., 2005) included states experienced spontaneously,
  stimulated by physical or psychological means, or caused
  by illness, resulting in a four-dimensional model. The dimen-
  sions are activation (low to high arousal), awareness span (a
  narrow to broad range of ‘contents available to attention and
  conscious processing’, p. 114), self-awareness (diminished to
  heightened), and sensory dynamics (reduced to heightened
  sensation). The authors present their four dimensions as a
  first step towards constructing what they call the ‘C-space’:
  the space of states of consciousness. The counterpart to
  the C-space is the ‘B-space’: the space of functional brain
  states. The challenge is to create mappings between the
  two, whether these are understood as strict one-to-one
  mappings or as one-to-many or many-to-many mappings. In
  any case, they argue that with state–space approaches we
  should only ever expect the locations in both spaces to be
  ‘blurred’ (determined with limited resolution), meaning the
  final mappings will always be coarse-grained and probabi-
  listic (p. 119).

This really is a big challenge  – to bring together subjective

experiences of altered states with what we know of the

underlying physiology. Some people have an enormously

wide range of experiences over their lifetimes. They may

have taken many different drugs, practised meditation,

yoga, or Tai Chi over long periods, and used TMS, sensory iso-

lation tanks, or other kinds of ‘phenotechnology’, as Thomas

Metzinger calls it. In these ways, they may have gained a

good personal understanding of how to shift from state to

state, how to maintain or leave a given state, and how

each state can be used, but as yet this kind of under-

standing has not been systematically integrated into

academic research.

We may imagine a future in which we thoroughly under-

stand the nature of phenospace and the various technol-

ogies that can move us around within it. Metzinger claims

that with this knowledge we should in principle be able to

design our own ego tunnels (conscious experiences which

we attribute to our selves) by tinkering with the hardware

that supports them.

Whether the desired phenomenal content is

religious awe, an ineffable sense of sacredness,

the taste of cinnamon, or a special kind of sexual

arousal does not really matter. So, what is your

favourite region of phenospace? What conscious

experience would you like to order up?

(2009, pp. 220–221)

PRoFILe 13.1

Thomas Metzinger (b. 1958)

Thomas Metzinger is no one. A German

philosopher, and director of research groups

in neuroethics and theoretical philosophy at

the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz,

he claims that no one ever had or was a self.

In Being No One, and his later book The Ego Tunnel, he

argues that what we take to be persistent entities are really

ongoing processes: the contents of transparent self models.

He has experienced and written about many ‘altered states’,

including lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences, medita-

tion, and drug-induced experiences, and is concerned about

the ethical implications of our rapidly advancing phenotech-

nology. When we can choose which areas of phenospace

we want to visit, or can enhance our cognitive skills with

specially tailored chemicals, we will need to take responsi-

bility for the consequences. Hence much of his work is in the

new field of neuroethics. Metzinger was a co-founder of the

Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and has

edited books on conscious experience and the NCCs.

FIGURE 13.6 • The chemical structures of some
well-known psychoactive drugs.
Many of these resemble the
structure of neurotransmitters.