Philosophy and Psychedelics: The Big Questions
In this post, I’ll lay out some of the big philosophical questions that psychedelics raise. I might even hint at some possible solutions. But be warned, these are not things that are easy to settle. If you are looking for easy answers, this post, philosophy, and psychedelics are all probably not for you. But if you’re brave or already down the rabbit hole of questioning your existence, read on!
Epistemology: How do we know?
For those who haven’t taken philosophy at university, epistemology is the study of knowledge and is concerned with things like “what counts as knowledge?”, “How can we be sure something is true?”
Lots of questions that arise from psychedelic experiences come back to figuring out what, if anything, we can say we can take from them. Do they teach us anything new?
Psychedelics alter our perceptions and how we relate to the world. We rely heavily on our perceptions to navigate everyday activities. We see things that others do not and have experiences that seem impossible under the customary, natural laws we take for granted. These experiences sometimes feel authentic – maybe even more accurate than our everyday waking life.
Even if we don’t get caught up in trying to work out what a psychedelic experience tells us, they still dent our typical epistemic assumptions. We tend not to question that if we see something that seems real, it is real. But after a psychedelic experience, we know that your perceptions can radically change with a subtle chemical alteration in your brain. What psychedelics teach us about perception is not to take what we see for granted. Because they undermine our everyday assumptions, they have the potential to open us up to new ways of thinking and gaining knowledge.
The question, for philosophers, is what to make of these different ways of knowing.
Metaphysics: What’s out there?
Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate nature of reality and goes beyond what the observational limits of science can tell us. Psychedelics can feel like they give us perceptual access to things about the world and ourselves that we don’t usually experience. So, it’s no surprise that these experiences spawn many metaphysical questions. Broadly, they fall into two very rough categories.
One is questions about the nature of our selves. I’ll talk about those shortly, under Philosophy of Mind.
The other is questions about the world. I’m not talking about our planet but rather everything that is. This is where some of the most heated social media debates arise.
An excellent example of a metaphysical question is whether the entities people meet when under the influence of DMT (dimethyltryptamine) are real, and if they are, does this mean they exist independent of us, or are they something that’s just in our heads?
Another recurring theme is that the “real” world is an illusion or simulation. The simulation hypothesis has a long tradition, including playing a role in Descartes’s thought experiments, but has been re-popularised by contemporary philosophers such as Nick Bostrom.
Mind: What’s in here?
The implications of psychedelic experiences for the philosophy of mind are profound and far-reaching. These altered states of consciousness, induced by psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and 5-MeO-DMT, challenge our traditional understanding of the mind and its relation to the world.
The phenomenon of ego dissolution or death, often reported during intense psychedelic experiences (especially with 5-MeO-DMT), raises questions regarding the nature of self and personal identity. The apparent loss of the boundary between ourselves and the external world forces us to reconsider the mind’s role in constructing and maintaining our sense of self. We consider ourselves separate from others and our environment, but how “real” is this? This blurring of the self-other distinction supports the notion of a more interconnected, less individualistic understanding of consciousness. It also illustrates the long and respectable philosophical and mystical tradition of considering the self to be an illusion – that there is no “I” in the first place.
Psychedelic experiences feel as if they provide insights into the nature of conscious experience itself. The radical alterations in perception, cognition, and emotion experienced under the influence of psychedelics raise questions about the underlying neural correlates of consciousness and the possibility of multiple forms of conscious awareness beyond the ordinary waking state.
Language: How do we say it?
The ineffability of psychedelic experiences, where profound insights and experiences are difficult or impossible to put into words, challenges the limits of language and highlights the need for a richer philosophical vocabulary to describe the full range of human experience. This can encourage us to explore alternative ways of understanding and communicating ideas, such as through art, music, and direct experiential approaches.
But it also leads us to wonder what is happening where language fails. Is it because we’re experiencing something new we have no words for? Is it that psychedelics disrupt the normal relationship between our terms and the world? Or is it just that the part of our brains that control language and communication is affected?
Purpose: Why are we here?
Separate from everything we’ve already considered, or, more commonly, at the same time as we’re experiencing one or more of these questions, psychedelics can lead us to reflect on ideas of purpose.
Sometimes this can be on a grand scale, as we experience ideas or illustrations of why humanity, all life, or even the entire universe, exists.
Often, this is individual. What is the point of my life? Why am I here? Where do I fit? With the change in perspective that psychedelics can entail, people can experience profound changes in their sense of what their lives and actions are for, as their assumptions are temporarily stripped away.
Ethics: What should we do?
All these categories mentioned above have implications for ethics – how we think about our values regarding right or wrong. This shouldn’t be a massive surprise, as all our ethical decisions have other facts underneath them. E.g., thinking about how we treat other people or animals implicitly assumes they exist and have experiences of both joy and suffering that are relevantly like ours.
Any time we change our views about the way the world is, what we can know about it, or our place in it, our ideas about what we should or shouldn’t do can potentially change with them.
There are also serious ethical questions about what it means to deliberately produce these changes in ourselves and others, particularly in the context of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Psychedelics can be used to change people in profound ways, but should they?
What can psychedelic philosophers can teach us?
All of this may leave you wondering what, if anything, is the point of philosophically engaging with psychedelics. If all we have are complex questions that don’t have easy answers, what is the point of psychedelic philosophers?
The point is that there while there are no easy answers, there are better and worse ways to approach thinking about them. We’ve been thinking about these sorts of things for a long time, so can absolutely help highlight what doesn’t work. But we can also help with ways to explore and become comfortable with complexity and ambiguity. Sometimes you don’t need a right answer, you just nee to avoid the egregiously wrong ones all of which will have been tried by a philosopher in the past.
If you’re keen to delve deeper into psychedelics and philosophy, you can see me, Dr Chris Letheby, and Dr Traill Dowie discuss all these questions and more at Philosophy and Psychedelics: The Big Questions, on Wednesday 10 May, at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne. This even will also be livestreamed and ticket-holders will have access to the event recording. So, the only reason you could miss out I if you wait too long to make your booking. Get your tickets now!
