Jason K. Day

Ego-dissolution is a phenomenon of central interest across interdisciplinary research on psychedelics. In this paper, we present a philosophical and qualitative critique of the claim that ego-dissolution can result in conscious states with no phenomenal sense of self, i.e., states that completely lack any form of self-consciousness. We first turn to recent publications by Chris Letheby and Raphaël Millière for whom 5-MeO-DMT trip reports present clear evidence for the existence of totally selfless experiential states. Their claim is undermined, we argue, by the fact that they operate with overinflated notions of ‘self’ and ‘self-consciousness,’ meaning that more minimal forms are available and arguably still present in 5-MeO-DMT experiences. We then perform a qualitative thematic analysis of 411 5-MeO-DMT trip reports. Pointing to the ambiguous language of the trip reports, the self-admitted inadequacy of the descriptions, and the affective dimension of the reported experiences, we argue that claims concerning total selflessness are unwarranted and instead offer an alternative interpretation: extreme ego- dissolution during 5-MeO-DMT experiences involves a radically minimal form of self-consciousness, one in which the identity of the subject is experienced as unfamiliar and underdetermined.

Established by the 1971 United Nations (UN) Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the prohibition of the recreational use of psychedelics (lysergic acid diethylamide [LSD], psilocybin, N,N-dimethyltryptamine [N,N-DMT], and mescaline) has two premises. First, recreational use poses a serious threat to public health because psychedelics are highly liable to addiction and abuse. Second, psychedelics have only limited scientific and medical uses. In this article, we raise the following questions: are these premises true such that prohibition is justified? If not, are decriminalization and legal regulation justified alternatives? Drawing on interdisciplinary research, we show that the premises of prohibition are false. Psychedelics are not highly liable to addiction or abuse, and so recreational use is not a serious threat to public health. Moreover, the uses of psychedelics exceed medical and scientific uses. Prohibition, we conclude, is therefore unjustified. We then show that decriminalization is based on the same false premises as prohibition, that legal regulation is based on weaker versions of these premises, and thus that both alternatives entail unjustified restrictions on recreational users. Finally, we present a fourth approach: communalization. This entails that all adults have the freedom to recreationally use psychedelics without restrictions and that communities provide harm reduction and benefit enhancement services to support this freedom.

In “On the Teachings of Gotama Buddha” (1925) and “Socrates-Buddha” (1926), Edmund Husserl claims that the Buddha achieves a transcendental view of consciousness by performing the epoché. Yet, states Husserl, the Buddha fails to develop a purely theoretical and universal science of consciousness, i.e., phenomenology, because his purely practical goal of Nibbāna limits knowledge of consciousness. I evaluate Husserl’s claims by examining the Buddha’s Majjhima Nikāya. I argue that Husserl correctly identifies an epoché and transcendental viewpoint in the Buddha’s teachings. However, I contend that Husserl’s distinction between pure theory and pure praxis leads him to misconstrue the function of the Buddha’s epoché, the extent of knowledge that the Buddha gains from the transcendental viewpoint, and the nature of Nibbāna. I finally suggest that the Buddha presents a way of studying consciousness that is a way of life, meaning that any distinction between pure theory and pure praxis is dissolved.

I here present an anarchist critique of the idea of ‘animalistic evil’ and its common use as a justification for the State’s existence and use of force. On this view, ‘evil’ is a privation of morality, justice, and civilised behaviour. It is then identified with the ‘animalistic’ since animals are often thought to be defined by the aforesaid privation. I first clarify the idea of animalistic evil within the history of philosophy and science. Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895) prominently argue that all that prevents humanity from devolving into animalistic evil, a state of violent and individualistic struggle for bare survival, is the power of State government to forcibly control the animalistic drives within its citizens. I subsequently pose two questions. (1) Is it justified to associate animal life with evil when this is (a) understood as a privation of a morality, justice and society and (b) characterised as an individualistic struggle for survival? (2) If this is not justified, what is the political harm of doing so? Building on the work of the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), I argue that any conception of animalistic evil is unjustifiable, that it is a false justification for the State’s existence and use of force, and that the State, upon making the empty threat of animalistic evil, both violently harms individuals and impedes the socially beneficial practice of mutual aid.

Induced by intake of the psychedelic substances LSD, psilocybin, DMT and mescaline, psychedelic experiences have been extensively described by subjects as entailing a most unusual increase in the scope and quality of their consciousness. Accordingly, psychedelic experiences have been widely characterised as an “expansion of consciousness.” This article poses the following question, as yet unaddressed in contemporary philosophy and the tradition of phenomenology: to what exactly does “expansion of consciousness” refer as a general characterisation of psychedelic experiences, and what role might attention play therein? On the basis of Aron Gurwitsch’s phenomenology of attention, the following thesis is presented: (a) “expansion of consciousness” refers to a particular restructuration of consciousness in psychedelic experiences. (b) This occurs by means of certain extreme transformations in direction, scope, mode and degree of attention. In order to explicate this thesis, the characteristic features of psychedelic experiences that pertain to expansion of consciousness and attention are first systematically identified from a survey of subject reports. Second, it is demonstrated that the few previous attempts to understand expansion of consciousness in terms of attention as a filter/reducing-valve, spotlight or zoom-lens each fail to explain how consciousness is structured in psychedelic experiences. Third, it is argued that psychedelic expansion of consciousness is a general restructuration of consciousness by means of extreme attentional transformations. In conclusion, brief consideration is given to the question of whether psychedelic expansion of consciousness can have epistemic and ethical value for life.

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy is an ambitious collected volume of fourteen chapters, accompanied by an epilogue by Jean-Luc Nancy, in which current Merleau-Ponty scholars together aim to demonstrate the urgent relevance of Merleau-Ponty to contemporary philosophy across a range of fields including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art. Divided into four thematic sections, namely, “Legacies”, “Mind and Nature”, “Politics, Power, and Institution” and “Art and Aesthetics”, this collected volume provides a rich resource for Merleau-Ponty scholars who are interested in novel applications and understudied aspects of his thought. It also opens up Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre to the general reader, presenting many possible entry-ways into the diversity of his work. In my review of Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, I suggest that each of its thematic sections could have been the subject of a separate volume themselves, and that the volume would then perhaps have not suffered from a number of poorly developed lines of argumentation. But I consider that the inclusion of all these thematically diverse sections in a single volume nonetheless presents a forceful display of the wide-ranging relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to contemporary philosophy.