Chris Letheby

I am a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at The University of Western Australia (UWA). My areas of specialization are philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of neuroscience. My research interests include the causal mechanisms and epistemic status of transformative spiritual practices, the possibility of a "naturalistic spirituality", and the nature of self-awareness. At UWA I teach topics including logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of AI, and philosophy of psychology and psychiatry.

My research to date has focused mainly on the use of classic psychedelic drugs in neuroscience and psychiatry. In several articles and a book, I have argued that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism, the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is. I take a neurophilosophical approach, grounding my philosophical analyses in scientific findings, and I have engaged in several interdisciplinary collaborations with neuroscientists and psychologists.

My monograph Philosophy of Psychedelics was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press, in the series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry. An open-access symposium featuring multiple commentaries on the book was published in 2022 by the journal Philosophy and the Mind Sciences. The book has received two awards, both from The University of Adelaide (where I worked as a postdoc while writing it): the Faculty of Arts Prize for Outstanding Research by an Early Career Researcher and the School of Humanities Early Career Prize for best publication in 2021. A Spanish translation was published in 2022 by Editorial Bauplan.