The “Feeling of Knowing,” the Psychedelic Sensorium, and Contemporary Neuroscience

Abstract

ABSTRACTNoetic insight involves direct access to knowledge beyond that which is available through the five senses or through reason. It typically has to do with sensing the interconnectedness of all things, and is informed by a feeling that one knows but without knowing how. Psychedelic substances constitute one vehicle for the production of noetic experiences. Using a biopsychosocial approach, this article explores the shifting contexts for the enjoyment and analysis of noetic experience in twentieth-century American popular and scientific culture, beginning with the psychedelic revolution and culminating in the “quantum computer” turn of brain (and mind). It emerges that the ‘feeling of knowing’ may be a sensory ability after all, and a key to understanding many other forms of anomalous cognition.