•  529
    Psychedelics: Recent Philosophical Discussions
    In Thomas Schramme & Steven Edwards (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine, Springer. 2017.
    “Classic”, serotonergic psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin are the objects of renewed attention in science and psychiatry. A recent spate of research has produced evidence that psychedelics might be safe and effective adjuncts to the treatment of mood and addictive disorders, agents of positive psychological change in healthy subjects, and valuable tools for studying the neural mechanisms of perception and cognition. This chapter surveys three philosophical debates that have arisen in …Read more
  •  609
    Philosophy and classic psychedelics: A review of some emerging themes
    Journal of Psychedelic Studies 5 (3): 166-175. 2022.
    Serotonergic (or “classic”) psychedelics have struck many researchers as raising significant philosophical questions that, until recently, were largely unexplored by academic philosophers. This paper provides an overview of four emerging lines of research at the intersection of academic philosophy and psychedelic science that have gained considerable traction in the last decade: selfless consciousness, psychedelic epistemology, psychedelic ethics, and spiritual/religious naturalism. In this pape…Read more
  •  421
    Psychedelic therapy for body dysmorphic disorder
    with Shevaugn Johnson
    Journal of Psychedelic Studies 6 (1): 23-30. 2022.
    In this opinion piece we propose the investigation of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). BDD is a psychiatric disorder characterised by appearance-based preoccupations and accompanying compulsions. While safe and effective treatments for BDD exist, non-response and relapse rates remain high. Therefore, there is a need to investigate promising new treatment options for this highly debilitating condition. Preliminary evidence suggests safety, fe…Read more
  •  252
    Psychedelics and Moral Psychology: The Case of Forgiveness
    In Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Several authors have recently suggested that classic psychedelics might be safe and effective agents of moral enhancement. This raises the question: can we learn anything interesting about the nature of moral experience from a close examination of transformative psychedelic experiences? The interdisciplinary enterprise of philosophical psychopathology attempts to learn about the structure and function of the “ordinary” mind by studying the radically altered mind. By analogy, in this chapter we a…Read more
  •  35
    Self and Knowledge in Psychedelic Therapy
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3. 2022.
    Much of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics is devoted to elaborating and defending two basic claims: that psychedelic therapy works mainly by changing mental representations of the self, and that it has many epistemic benefits consistent with a naturalistic worldview. The commentaries in this symposium generally focus on one or the other of these claims. On the mechanistic front, the commentaries by Hoffman and by Martin and Sterzer seek to supplement my account by drawing attention to factors i…Read more
  •  1007
    Psychedelics and environmental virtues
    Philosophical Psychology 1 1-25. 2022.
    The urgent need for solutions to critical environmental challenges is well attested, but often environmental problems are understood as fundamentally collective action problems. However, to solve to these problems, there is also a need to change individual behavior. Hence, there is a pressing need to inculcate in individuals the environmental virtues — virtues of character that relate to our environmental place in the world. We propose a way of meeting this need, by the judicious, safe, and cont…Read more
  •  1
    Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  •  22
    Naturalizando la epistemología psicodélica
    with Fernando Huesca
    Reflexiones Marginales. 2022.
    Resumen. El objetivo de este ensayo consiste en mostrar que tipo de conocimiento de puede adquirir en las experiencias psicodélicas, pero tomando como marco de referencia una posición naturalista. En este texto se analizan tres formas en las que esto es posible: 1) la introspección psicodinámica o el saber qué, 2) el saber cómo, que se vincula con el aprendizaje de alguna habilidad concreta y 3) el conocimiento por familiaridad. No son todas las que son posibles, pero si son suficientes para mos…Read more
  •  486
    Naturalistic Entheogenics
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3. 2022.
    In this précis I summarise the main ideas of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics. The book discusses philosophical issues arising from the therapeutic use of “classic” psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. The book is organised around what I call the Comforting Delusion Objection to psychedelic therapy: the concern that this novel and promising treatment relies essentially on the induction of non-naturalistic metaphysical beliefs, rendering it epistemically objectionable. I begin the préc…Read more
  •  65
    Psychedelics, Atheism, and Naturalism Myth and Reality
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 29 (7-8): 69-92. 2022.
    An emerging body of research suggests that psychedelic experiences can change users’ religious or metaphysical beliefs. Here I explore issues concerning psychedelic-induced belief change via a critique of some recent arguments by Wayne Glausser. Two scientific studies seem to show that psychedelic experiences can convert atheists to belief in God, but Glausser holds that academic and popular discussions of these studies are misleading. I offer a different analysis of the relevant findings, attem…Read more
  • Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs
    with Christopher Timmermann, Hannes Kettner, Leor Roseman, Fernando E. Rosas, and Robin L. Carhart-Harris
    Scientific Reports 22166 (11): 1-13. 2021.
    Can the use of psychedelic drugs induce lasting changes in metaphysical beliefs? While it is popularly believed that they can, this question has never been formally tested. Here we exploited a large sample derived from prospective online surveying to determine whether and how beliefs concerning the nature of reality, consciousness, and free‑will, change after psychedelic use. Results revealed significant shifts away from ‘physicalist’ or ‘materialist’ views, and towards panpsychism and fatalism,…Read more
  •  1264
    Psychedelic ingestion and meditative practice are both ancient methods for altering consciousness that became widely known in Western society in the second half of the 20th century. Do the similarities begin and end there, or do these methods – as many have claimed over the years – share some deeper common elements? In this chapter I take a neurophilosophical approach to this question and argue that there are, indeed, deeper commonalities. Recent empirical studies show that psychedelics and med…Read more
  •  1442
    Philosophy of Psychedelics
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by "mystical" experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: do psychede…Read more
  •  682
    The Varieties of Psychedelic Epistemology
    In Nikki Wyrd, David Luke, Aimee Tollan, Cameron Adams & David King (eds.), Psychedelicacies: more food for thought from Breaking Convention. 2019.
    Recent scientific research suggests that altered states of consciousness induced by classic psychedelic drugs can cause durable psychological benefits in both healthy and patient populations. The phenomenon of ‘psychedelic transformation’ has many philosophically provocative aspects, not least of which is the claim commonly made by psychedelic subjects that their transformation is centrally due to some kind of learning or knowledge gain. Can psychedelic experiences really be a source of knowledg…Read more
  •  109
    Psychedelic Experience and the Narrative Self: An Exploratory Qualitative Study
    with N. Amada, T. Lea, and J. Shane
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (9-10): 6-33. 2020.
    It has been hypothesized that psychedelic experiences elicit lasting psychological benefits by altering narrative selfhood, which has yet to be explicitly studied. The present study investigates retrospective reports (n = 418) of changes to narrative self that participants believe resulted from, or were catalysed by, their psychedelic experience(s). Responses to open-ended questions were analysed using inductive and deductive thematic coding and interpreted within agent-centred approaches to dev…Read more
  •  68
    Being for no-one
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 1 (I): 1-26. 2020.
    Can there be phenomenal consciousness without self-consciousness? Strong intuitions and prominent theories of consciousness say “no”: experience requires minimal self-awareness, or “subjectivity”. This “subjectivity principle” faces apparent counterexamples in the form of anomalous mental states claimed to lack self-consciousness entirely, such as “inserted thoughts” in schizophrenia and certain mental states in depersonalization disorder. However, Billon & Kriegel have defended SP by arguing th…Read more
  •  145
    Naturalizing psychedelic spirituality
    Zygon 52 (3): 623-642. 2017.
    A pressing philosophical problem is how to respond to the existential, anxiety and disenchantment resulting from a naturalistic worldview that eschews transcendent foundations for meaning and value. This problem is becoming more urgent as the popularization of neuroscientific findings renders a disenchanted conception of human beings ever more vivid, compelling, and widespread. I argue that the study of transformative experiences occasioned by classic psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diet…Read more
  •  743
    Self unbound: ego dissolution in psychedelic experience
    Neuroscience of Consciousness 3 1-11. 2017.
    Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ‘I’ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ‘ego dissolution’ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to …Read more
  •  81
    In defence of embodied cognition: a reply to Fred Adams
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 11 (3): 403-414. 2012.
    Fred Adams : 619–628, 2010) criticizes the theory of embodied cognition which holds that conceptual and linguistic thought is grounded in the brain’s perceptual and sensorimotor systems. Among other things, Adams claims that: EC is potentially committed to an implausible criterion of sentence meaningfulness; EC lacks claimed advantages over rival accounts of conceptual thought; relevant experimental data do not show constitutive, but only causal, involvement of perception in conception; and EC c…Read more
  •  199
    The Philosophy of Psychedelic Transformation
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (9-10): 170-193. 2015.
    Recent scientific research into the therapeutic potential and mechanisms of psychedelic drugs raises intriguing and hitherto largely unexplored philosophical questions. A brief overview of the relevant science is given before addressing these questions. It is argued that psychedelic transformation is a distinctive psycho- pharmacological intervention because its mechanism of action ineliminably involves conscious mental representations, and thus is more transparent to the subject than the mechan…Read more
  •  210
    The epistemic innocence of psychedelic states
    Consciousness and Cognition 39 28-37. 2016.
    One recent development in epistemology, the philosophical study of knowledge, is the notion of ‘epistemic innocence’ introduced by Bortolotti and colleagues. This concept expresses the idea that certain suboptimal cognitive processes may nonetheless have epistemic (knowledge-related) benefits. The idea that delusion or confabulation may have psychological benefits is familiar enough. What is novel and interesting is the idea that such conditions may also yield significant and otherwise unavailab…Read more