Philosophy and Psychedelics

“Philosophy and Psychedelics - Frameworks” is a valuable piece of literature that has emerged after the “decade of the brain”, advances in neuroscience, the responses to Chalmers’ “hard problem” and improved possibilities for the recreational consumption of psychedelics, formal research and expanding medicinal/psychiatric uses. This book’s stated ambition is to investigate the “myriad loci where philosophy and psychedelics overall and potentially interact”.

The authors claim that psychedelics have the potential to offer new views and insights that cannot be easily explained or explained away. Psychedelics is the term chosen in this text to capture a set of chemicals known to cause certain reactions. The term is found by abstracting to the basic molecule, away from considerations of culture, character, cosmos etc. Other terms, such as entheogen, hallucinogens and the like bring their own interpretational frameworks, an indication of challenges the West has found in finding a common lens with which to tackle the subject.

The volume tackles the subject from three main directions though not in any order. We find a humanist dimension covering politics, sociology and psychiatry. A philosophical dimension with epistemological and ontological topics, and a few comparisons against religious thinkers.

I’ll start at the end of the book. The concluding chapter in this book highlights some key limitations in Western philosophy and proposes that psychedelics may help tackle them. These limitations include Aristotelian logic, the materialist worldview and reductionist focus on sensory perception as being primarily if not exclusively visual. The coincidence of these limitations is evident in quantum physics, where traditional either-or logic breaks down visually as exemplified in the two-slit experiment.

The analysis of the political and sociological/psychiatric dimension seeks to show that the history of psychedelics (in the US, and consequently most of the world) has seen efforts to suppress and criminalise consumption (“A cultural history of psychedelics in the US”). The essay on “Benjamin and Marcuse: Psychedelics and Revolution” discusses the role of psychedelics as a catalyst for revolution whilst at the same time being a commoditised product. This is very much a review of values and how values can be shaped and distorted in capitalist society and yet discusses how we can still find different ways of perceiving through psychedelics - yet still with potential for emancipation.

Presently, despite laws changing and the attitudes to psychedelics relaxing, there is a note of caution from the author of “Decolonizing the Philosophy of Psychedelics” about the risks of wholesale integration of psychedelics into medical practices. To consume psychedelics, one must become a patient and in doing so, one is subject to the practices of the medical establishment. In particular, the absence of rituals and traditions is a concern raised.

Hauskeller examines the scientific and political landscape helping to form the “psychedelic renaissance”. How can inducing madness help cure madness? This paradox can be ethically problematic. Just as problematic is trying to assess what are very different experiences. The clinical appropriation of these experiences further instrumentalises and commercialises extraordinary personal experiences and indigenous practices.

In short, these essays highlight the challenges our social, political and economic model has in making sense of psychedelics and psychedelic experience.

The philosophical dimension surveys ontology, epistemology and phenomenology. A key takeaway for any philosophical framework is that one must always look at the context in which psychedelics may be used to throw a new light on philosophical thinking.

That being given, or at least recognised, there are challenges that psychedelics raise. The very first essay deals with ontology, asking “What is Real(ity)”? It is claimed that Whitehead’s process philosophy offers “a justification for the possibility of psychedelics producing ‘objective’ knowledge and that psychedelic experience holds a real potential for deepening our philosophical speculation and enriching our cosmological perspective.”

In “Mary on Acid: Experiences of unity and the epistemic gap”, Jylkkä draws an analogy to a well-known thought experiment that demonstrates the gap between experiential and scientific knowledge. By focusing on the sense of unity or ego dissolution, the author argues that the knowledge gained is not “knowledge about anything,” that is, not relational like scientific knowledge and therefore very different from scientific knowledge.

If one grants that there is indeed an “epistemic gap” that can only be bridged through consumption, one needs to assess whether psychedelics distort reality, otherwise we can’t derive reliable knowledge. There are several reasons to believe this is not necessarily the case - hallucinations do happen, of course - and the argument here challenges the fundamental assumption behind such claims, namely, a belief in naïve realism, and that divergence from that view of the world is in fact a distortion. Moen uses synaesthesia, colour phenomenology and aesthetic perception to argue his case. Moen goes one step further - these additional viewpoints may even be cognitively beneficial.

From philosophy of mind, we move to a focus on values and three essays that discuss gratitude, the sublime and “making the soul visible”. Here the focus is very much on what psychedelics can offer to the individual.

In “Power and the Sublime in Aldous Huxley’s Drug Aesthetics” we follow an investigation into how psychoactive drugs and power modify the self and how these modifications are reflected in literature. In the case of Huxley, the religious experience granted by psychoactives alter the sense of self and this self-discovery can lead to individual transformation.

In “Making your soul visible” Halewood takes us back to Whitehead and asks how we can rediscover the meaning of soul in relation to our narrow moments of consciousness and argues that psychedelics can help produce new propositions about the world that enrich our understanding.

The final section offers a comparative view by looking at Zen, Spinoza and Analytical Psychology following Jung - a diverse collection of thinkers.

I found the final section the most interesting. Suzuki challenged the potential of psychedelics and this may have been based upon different frameworks; the Zen Buddhist cartography of mind offers some potential to orientate ourselves through these experiences; Grof features here, unsurprisingly.

“The White Sun of Substance” was my favourite essay in this volume. Sjöstedt-Hughes walks us through his argument that Spinoza’s intuition is cognisant of fundamental essences and during these insights, we feel ourselves eternal and immortal. It bears the stamp of “mystical experience”, and if we grant that certain psychedelic states are qualitatively similar, if not identical, to certain mystical states then we must ask what psychedelics can help with here. Again, though, the epistemic gap must be bridged.

Last but not least, Jung features, with a particular focus on the “Red Book” and the psychonautic journey to the edge of the Unconscious and the archaic ground of our psyche. This journey gave Jung the tools to heal - and maybe this integration and healing is a theme throughout the book, that we find a way to integrate psychedelic experience and possibilities into our society, revamp our philosophies and perhaps find some soul.

I strongly recommend this book to any reader interested in understanding more about the potential of psychedelics to throw light on how the mind works, what this means for philosophy - ontology, epistemology and ethics as well as to see psychedelic analogies retraced in past thinkers. I also found the essays on the challenges faced by psychedelic research in becoming a full member of academic corpus worthwhile. I would have appreciated an epilogue sketching a programme for further research. Philosophy as “a way of life” is something that may also feature in this programme, I am reminded of Lilly’s samadhi tanks - we needn’t adopt western philosophy wholesale and must consider praxis and the cartography of mind.