Michael Pollan

And I challenged him on it, and I said, well, this is a drug experience.

And he would not take that as disproof or even reason for skepticism.

And he used as an example a famous thought experiment, the Mary experiment.

You have this brilliant woman who is the world's expert on color, on vision.

And she knows everything there is to know about cones and rods and how the whole system works.

But she lives in a completely black and white world.

She steps out one day and has the experience of color.

What has she learned, right?

What has been added to her stock of knowledge?

And he said, I was like Mary, and I had had this vision.

And

Nobody could convince me when I went back in the box of scientific materialism that it hadn't happened.

It had happened.

It was as sure as I have been of anything in my life.

And now he's exploring idealism.

What is idealism?

Idealism is the philosophy that consciousness is a universal field and that consciousness precedes matter.

We automatically assume that matter is primary.

Everything can be reduced to matter and energy, and they can be reduced to each other.

Idealism is no, no, no.