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Modes of Sentience: Psychedelics, Metaphysics, Panpsychism Paperback – 9 Dec. 2021

4.8 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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Modes of Sentience is an essay collection by philosopher of mind Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes that explores the extraordinary intersection of psychedelic experience with philosophy, the analysis of mind in relation to panpsychism, multiple dimensions of space, time, and other metaphysical matters. Keeping apace with the psychedelic renaissance in science and medicine, this collection proposes new philosophical models for discerning altered and alternate modes of sentience.
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  1. Print length
    222 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    9 Dec. 2021
  4. Dimensions
    15.6 x 1.42 x 23.39 cm
  5. ISBN-10
    1916266738
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1916266735
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Psychedelic Press
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 9 Dec. 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 222 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1916266738
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1916266735
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 349 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.6 x 1.42 x 23.39 cm
  • Best Sellers Rank: 328,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer reviews:
    4.8 out of 5 stars 18 ratings

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • ade webb
    5.0 out of 5 stars An important primer on a philosophical niche
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 March 2022
    Like expansive tasting menus at top restaurants, collections of essays from a single author tend to work best when a variety of size and style dishes are bound together by a coherent over-arching theme. Philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes’ new collection, Modes of Sentience, succeeds on both fronts. The theme is the interface of Alfred North Whitehead’s often-overlooked contribution to 20th Century philosophical thought with the psychedelic experience. Each essay, however, is a different dish with subtle variations of flavour. It is this variety makes a delicious collection for those prepared to invest the necessary time and concentration.

    One of the essays tracks the history of the psychedelic influence on philosophy from Plato to Foucault; another offers a detailed and appreciative overview of the ‘First Scientific Psychonaut’—Sir Humphrey Davy. However, these aren’t simply restaurant reviews of psychedelic experiences. Most are tightly-argued expositions of the implications of psychedelics for the Philosophy of Mind—from perception to panpsychism—albeit the meaty dishes are interlaced with occasional amuse-bouches and palate cleansers. Sjöstedt-Hughes conspectus of Whitehead’s philosophy has a neutron star density of analysis and argument while elsewhere Humphry Davy’s poem ‘The Spinosist’ is offered in full. The variation keeps us on our toes in every sense.

    Picking up ‘Modes of Sentience’ with no knowledge of process philosophy could be a challenging experience as the concepts that underpin the collection aren’t typically found within introductions to either philosophy or psychedelics. Consequently, preparatory familiarity with this niche of philosophical thinking in particular would be beneficial to readers. By the time the final dessert is served—a rich mousse of N-Dimensional Space and Sentience—the breadth of the collection is clear. This is a deep look into an equally profound intellectual realm.

    Anyone interested in learning to write in a clear philosophical style will find Sjöstedt-Hughes’ essays an object lesson in content curation and the construction of hard-hitting arguments. The writing is crystal clear and the whole collection free of the artificial additives and flavouring that cloy so many modern attempts at serious thought. There is, however, a lightness of touch that preserves its appeal for anyone interested in what different modes of sentience (and the means to achieve them) can teach us about our own minds and the universe they inhabit.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Angus H.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Well-explained philosophy, thought provoking and consequential
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 March 2022
    Brilliantly explained philosophy engaging with the big questions. The ideas in this book have left me excitably questioning my worldview, pondering the possibilities of knowledge and being.

    Highly recommend!
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Gregory Nixon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Divergent Threads Woven into a New Spacetime Fabric
    Reviewed in Canada on 10 April 2022
    Verified Purchase
    Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes has brought together a collection of essays that on first glance seem to be about disparate subjects – the process metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead, the philosophy and phenomenology of psychedelic experience, and the ontological worldview of panpsychism. Yet, the book is thematically united and Sjöstedt-Hughes impressively weaves these philosophical threads together to produce a very rare fabric, a fabric of universal sentience that comes together in a refreshingly new worldview in his final chapter.

    The title, Modes of Sentience, is descriptively accurate but might have worked better as part the subtitle because it does not capture a browser's attention with a dramatic declaration. (Think of colourful titles like Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis, or Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind, all big sellers yet mostly based in the usual materialist assumptions. Sjöstedt-Hughes's book, on the contrary, is clear, exciting, and understandable to anyone with a sincere interest in philosophical metaphysics.) Let me briefly outline my own responses through its ten chapters, some of which are longer with more detail and others that are more or less short outlines. Please note that my summaries in no way indicate the rich prose of the actual book, which needs to be read in its original context.

    Chapter 1, "Panpsychism: Ubiquitous Sentience”, is the keynote. It is also a good, basic introduction to panpsychist thinking and the ultimate metaphysical categories in general. I very much liked how the author immediately cleared up his use of the term “sentience” by identifying it (to my mind) with non-conscious or unconscious (or pre-conscious) experience, as in Whiteheadian panexperientialism or pancreativism: “In the hierarchy of states of mind, ‘consciousness’ is an uncommon complex crown of sentience. All has mind though not all has consciousness, let alone self-consciousness” (p. 2). My only difficulty with this is that some equate mind with consciousness, so it might be more accurate to say, “All have experience though not all have conscious experience.” He follows this with a deft deconstruction of emergentism and the assumptions of physicalism, as well as an excellent summary of why panpsychism is so abhorred by the latter. The evidential proofs required by science are not enough to reach a deeper understanding, for “beyond proof we must employ evidential reasoning (inference to the best explanation) rather than inductive empirical verification,” including the “experience of other experience” (p. 10). Early on, I might suggest, the experience of other experience is all we have, what we are, which suggests primary empathy may precede individual selfhood.

    Chapter 2, “Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead’s Metaphysics”, is another attempt to provide a very brief point-form summary of the vast canvas of Whitehead’s cosmic thinking. I would say he is more successful here than most, but for the uninitiated such a sudden introduction of new terminology might be confusing, still as an outline it’s great.

    Chapter 3, “The Concrescence of Dissent”, is a succinct discussion of Whitehead’s life, his place in the history of philosophy, and his rejection of the orthodoxies of both science and religion, “Whitehead as the arch-heretic” (p. 30). This was most intriguing to me as it fleshes out Whitehead’s complex concept of “God”, which is associated with the ultimate creative dynamic (i.e., process) of reality, making Whitehead more pagan than Christian (in spite of determined attempts by the latter to claim him, as in “process theology”).

    Chapter 4, “Psychedelic Experience” is an introduction to just that. It includes a good working definition of “veridical experience” and how psychedelic experience can qualify as such, but for there are plenty of books out there for more detailed, in-depth explorations.

    Chapter 5, “The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy”, if taken at face value, would place psychedelic experience as the foundation of all philosophical thinking, if not of human consciousness itself. He includes his pick of major philosophers and scientists whom he considers to have been influenced by psychedelic drugs (which includes here nitrous oxide and opium). I found this chapter a bit of a stretch for my sense of credibility and the thinkers mentioned were actually quite diverse. He ignored many of the big names explicitly doing psychedelic-influenced philosophy in the contemporary era.

    Chapter 6, “Substance and Process” is a chapter as brief as a flashback on the important difference between those two ideas. Of course the world is deterministic if it’s based in substance, which is subject to the laws of physics. But since the unexpected – creativity – is the essence of process, “The future is theoretically unpredictable, and the possibilities for experience are infinite” (p. 97). Essential reading for those who sense the limitations of reductive physicalism.

    Chapter 7, “The Great God Pan is Not Dead” had special relevance for me since I, too, have written of the return of Pan (Nixon, 2009), including as a prefix, in our cultural consciousness, a refreshing, if wild, antidote to both reductionism and the nihilistic cultural fragmentation of the prefix “post-” in recent thought. For me, this was the best chapter in the book (though the first and last are close seconds). Here Sjöstedt-Hughes no longer speaks through the viewpoints of others but comes to the fore in his own voice, which is both original, engaging, and zesty. I deeply appreciated his reconceptualization of Whitehead’s process cosmology in a more mythic (i.e., archetypal) context, “…with its panentheism, panexperientialism, divine mischief and intense hedonism, kinship to pagan animism and its Romantic nature worship, we are better to re-designate the god of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, as Pan. We thereby paganize Whitehead under the symbol of this seducer goat-god.” Then he sums up this line of thinking of a renewed worldview, “The decline in Christian belief and its offspring, modern cosmology, allows for a revival of a truly naturalistic ontology. God is dead; Pan returns” (p. 105). Rousing stuff! Not the Whitehead – the staid, elderly British philosopher-mathematician without a scandal or social controversy in his life – many would recognize. But I do and I loved it.

    Chapter 8, “The Penology of Perception”, Sjöstedt-Hughes analyzes the various ways of fundamental experiencing, i.e., perceiving in the broadest sense: sensing, perception, ecto-physical correlate, endo-physical correlate, and demeteption, the last a neologism meaning “perceptions that are not sensing of the physical environment” (p. 138). I will leave the reader to explore these important differences. It’s important that “prehension” be understood as the foundation of all sensing, though I’m not sure why the author ignored the rich term apprehension. I wish I had not noted the suggestion of “demented” as a possible derivative from “demeteption”, for that distracted my thinking.

    Chapter 9, “The First Scientific Psychonaut: Sir Humphrey Davy” is the longest chapter, but it’s engaging as it is mostly a narrative. I admit that I found Davy’s life story and his deep engagement with nitrous oxide very interesting, but I fear not as fascinating as the author himself did. “I am one of the Roman deities!” Davy heard a voice declare one stoned night in the ruins of the Roman colosseum (p. 146). Nitrous oxide is not really a psychedelic, is it? It includes a good discussion of “cosmic consciousness”, the loss of individual identity in becoming “one with the universe” (the DMT experience so devastatingly terrifying to Michael Pollan (2018) in his bestseller). Best was that the author embraced the direct apprehension of the reality of panpsychism via empathic awareness in highly attuned people in non-ordinary moments, so indirectly positing panpsychism by default (consciousness is otherwise inexplicable) is the lesser route to understanding.

    Chapter 10, “Deeper than Depth: N-Dimensional Space and Sentience”, is indeed the deepest chapter, sometimes baffling, but most often inspirational. It is a wonderful combination of the frontiers of science and the considerable expanse of Sjöstedt-Hughes’s own intuitions. What is space, really? is the foundational question asked. I must admit that this was the only chapter that truly challenged my deepest assumptions. The fourth dimension sounds like a “space” I would dearly like to visit (or revisit).

    Overall, this is a short but often quite wonderful book that I sincerely recommend to open-minded, intelligent readers, so it may challenge your assumptions too and just maybe lead to unexpected experiences in heretofore unrealized worlds.

    References

    Nixon, G. (2009), Skrbina's Mind that Abides: Panpsychism in the New Millennium. Journal of Consciousness Studies 16 (9), Sept 2009: 116-121.

    Pollan, M. (2018), How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics (London: Allen Lane).
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