Philosophy of Psychedelics

by Chris Letheby

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 aphilosophical do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about the metaphysical nature of reality?This book is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs. Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism.Within the book, Letheby integrates empirical evidence and philosophical considerations in the service of a simple this "Comforting Delusion Objection" to psychedelic therapy fails. While exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, they are not, on closer inspection, the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics lead to lasting benefits by altering the sense of self, and changing how people relate to their own minds and lives-not by changing their beliefsabout the ultimate nature of reality. The upshot is 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). Controlled psychedelic use can lead to genuine forms ofknowledge gain and spiritual growth-even if no Cosmic Consciousness or transcendent divine Reality exists.Philosophy of Psychedelics is an indispensable guide to the literature for researchers already engaged in the field of psychedelic psychiatry, and for researchers-especially philosophers-who want to become acquainted with this increasingly topical field.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Drugs

271 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 5, 2021

Reviews

[B. Rule · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, closely-reasoned argument in support of the benefits of psychedelics as agents of psychological change and/or experiential knowledge. Letheby basically plays out the argument on "hard mode": accepting naturalism (physicalism/materialism) as true, can we prove that psychedelics have benefits irreducible to a comforting delusion in questionable metaphysical realities? Basically, are these drugs just making people happy by deluding them with visions of god, universal consciousness, machine elves, panpsychism, or other supernatural flimflammery?

Letheby methodically walks through a formulation of the so-called Comforting Delusion Objection and (to my mind at least) conclusively proves that it must fail even if naturalism is true. His essential point is that the mechanism of action is a phenomenological insight into the nature of the self, not molecular changes to neuroplasticity nor epistemic commitments to non-naturalistic metaphysical concepts. Even your most hardened materialist can benefit from experientially realizing the constructed nature of the self and its corollary, that it can be constructed otherwise than its existing configuration. It's a funny kind of medicine because it works primarily by inducing an experience, not effecting a neuroanatomical change (although he does not deny that this may also play a part). Letheby acknowledges that this particular kind of medicine does in fact sometimes induce patients to entertain non-naturalistic metaphysical ideas, but he tries to downplay the epistemic risk by noting that it has epistemic benefits that cannot be obtained in other ways, that it does not require one to ascribe to such views, and that they arise only in a subset of patients.

Now, you may quibble with the centrality of those metaphysical insights in the psychedelic experience. Letheby wants to push them under the rug or at least reduce them to a fringe phenomenon on psychedelics' rich tapestry. I think they're a lot more common than he admits, and much of his own evidence consists in trip reports highlighting just such beliefs. But I also think he's right-on that accepting those beliefs is not a necessary part of the benefits of psychedelics. A critically-minded naturalist experiencer of mystical insight retains the ability to evaluate and reject some or all of the subjective experience after the fact, and can nonetheless retain real insights into the nature of the self which are separable from insights into reality. Psychedelics give you insight into your reality, not reality simpliciter. You can safely throw out the bathwater and keep the baby.

Personally, I'm more metaphysically agnostic than Letheby. Who freakin knows whether naturalism, panpsychism, idealism, or pastafarianism is true. But his project is absolutely valuable no matter where you fall on that spectrum of belief, precisely because he has established that the epistemic bonafides of psychedelics are divorced from substantive metaphysical commitments.

The only reason I hesitate to glowingly recommend this book to everyone has nothing to do with the cogency of the arguments. Rather, the caveat relates to style. This is a dry, technical work of philosophy. It's schematized and chock-full of syllogistic arguments analyzed in detail. There's maybe one joke in the whole book (which gets lampshaded in a footnote!) and Letheby emits not a whisper about his own personal encounters with psychedelics. It's almost hilariously stiff in tone, with a "here's what I'll say, now I'm saying it, that's what I said" structure typical of academic writing. Further, there are lots of weird-ass third-person references to his own prior works, as though he's so affrighted of being accused of a personal stake in the subject that he has to distance himself from himself even in citing.

I certainly don't mind that academic approach and have ingested plenty of it. But if you are a reader looking for a...personal connection to the subject of psychedelics, or somebody to breathe existential fire into the chemical equations...this ain't it, bub. Don't pick this up expecting Michael Pollan redux, is what I'm saying. But if you are exercised by the question of whether you can trust anything that a psychedelic drug has told you, and you're willing to do the philosophical work to get there, this volume is an excellent answer in the affirmative by a sure-footed intellectual guide.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

As per usual, I won't write a review. I don't know how. Instead, I'll rant freely about whatever this book brought to mind. In a sense its like taking a shit, I feel this need of emptying myself, of cleaning up the system. Thus, the rant.

I'm a philosophy student. I love reading philosophy. I believe psychedelics to be the most transformative thing in existence. I love psychedelics. I love Alan Watts, he is the most brilliant speaker that I know of. Letheby quotes Alan Watts a lot. Seemingly then, this should be the perfect book for me, it has all the ingredients. The sugar, the cream, the cherry on top. Yet, I hated it, it absolutely pissed me off. Now, why is that?

Clearly, it might be a projection. That is possible. One could think, plausibly, that I'm jealous of this author for having written something that I would have liked to have written myself. Some sort of inferiority complex, one could argue. Or, probably more likely, some vague fear of this (shit) being the culmination of my ideas? That if I just continue on my path, this (shit) is where I will end up? Possibly, it would be to arrogant to categorically claim all such notions to be false. That this (shitty) synthesis is where it all leads to? I dont't know. Lets hope not.

So why does it piss me off? Why can't I take it seriously? Why do I start skimming after 20% of the book, continously increasing my skimming speed throughout? Why don't I respect his ideas? Surely, as a professor, or whatever this dude is, he has gone further within academia than I have, he is a better academic writer than I am, his thoughts are clearly presented and their deductions seem to follow naturally. Yet, why does it piss me off to read it? Reading Alan Watts or Huxley or Mckenna on psychedelics doesn't piss me off, not all academic philosophy pisses me off, so why does this one piss me off so intensely?

Its something about the contrast between the form and the content. Firstly, Letheby writes in what one could describe as "analytic philosophy". Its dry, its based on arguments, its very left-brain, unimaginative, boring, wouldn't charm the girls at the bar, right? Its everything that modern academic philosophy, at least in my western, european, scandinavian bubble, unfortunately is. Maybe I've been in uni too long? But people stay in uni forever, don't they, isn't that the path to being a professor? But what is an analytic philosophy professor? Surely not a philosopher?

Hegel writes somewhere in the Phenomenology that language necessarily speaks of universal categories, it never gets down to the thing, the particular thing in and of itself. We speak of trees (all trees), of forks, of people, of planets. Sure, we have names, but the name isn't identical with the identity of the person, its a label, its something else, slapped on top. Thus, language is, seemingly, according to this argument, of a second order. It never gets to the essence of things, it generalises, universalises, homogenises, in a way, it un-creates the particular, it ruins it by turning it into language.

Is this always the case? No, but it is precisely the case with my idea and distaste of what I understand to be "analytic philosophy". Poetry sometimes has another effect, poetry is qualitatively different than analytic thinking is. Poetry invokes images, it creates, it actualizes deep symbols, it superimposes ideas in ways never done before, thus highlighting unseen aspects of all the ideas involved, sometimes crystallising into something new.

Good writing is an experience for the reader! That is easy for me to say, I'm not a very good writer, but I know what sort of writing works for me. And this does not. It makes me angry, it makes philosophy seem silly. In a vulgar image, it feels like a virgin arguing about sex, trying to convince a group of his ideas of how to bring one's partner to orgasm. There is some immense arrogance involved here, that arguments, stupid silly deductive arguments, somehow is the absolute benchmark for anything that exists. When this arrogance is put against psychedelics, which is precisely that which goes up and beyond all pre-conceptions, premises, ideas of what is and what might be, it just seem silly.

Now I know, I know. What he is trying to do is praiseworthy. It is good that someone tries. It was a good attempt, I suppose. Unfortunately, its just the case that what he tries to do cannot be done. The psychedelic, or the mystical, experience, cannot be reduced into deductive arguments, especially if those arguments, or the framework involved, is essentially naturalistic.

Poetry, art, narration, imagery, dance, ritual, music, those things gets close. Philosophy just seem kind of silly when put to this task. Maybe its not philosophy qua philosophy. Probably not. Probably just philosophy in its currenct manifestation as a "job" for professors at university. "Philosophers" doing philosophy from 8 to 4, and then going back to being non-philosophers. Writing their articles, retelling the same arguments over and over.

Its starting to feel like to be a philosophers is precisely to leave academia. Like that institution is diametrically opposed to the role of the philosopher. Especially the psychedelic philosopher, which must be RADICAL. That is the only way, she must be explosive, blowing apart every framework that tries to ensnare her thoughts. Forcing her into naturalistic philosophy is to reduce her to a scientist. Scientists are useful, but they are not philosophers.

Psychiatrists are useful, psychologists are useful, doctors are useful, all their perspectives are very much needed, physicists too, and biologists, and so forth. But a philosopher cannot cling to any dogma, to any set of ideas or rules, a philosophers only job is to question! I don't believe that it is possible to have a full-blown psychedelic experience, or multiple, and end up feeling like physicalism deserves respect and should be "assumed correct" because we "are likely to see its truthfulness in the future".

Analytic WRITING (not implying math), is what this academician and other people hired by the university are doing. Maybe there is some use for that, maybe. I think philosophy is not philosophy unless its written in imagistic, poetic language, language that moves and shakes, that roars and attacks. This bullshit we are stuck doing is something else. Its logic but with words, something boring like that.

Anyway...

Yea, the book, what about it? Well I didn't really read it, did I? I read 25% and I skimmed the rest with immense speed - feeling justified that there wouldn't be anything new for me to discover in it.

Once again, the book might be completely fine. Might be a great book for all I know (doubt it though). Maybe I have covered most of what one is able to grab from reading about psychedelics, maybe I'm just now experiencing reiterations of the same. Or maybe its just a shitty book? Who knows! Some people seem to thing that its good. A lot of people seem to thing that the style its written in is smart, clever, genial, the correct way of doing it. I'm just some dude, arrogantly casting judgement upon those who has more to show for their intellectual labor than I do.

But I have read great books, lots of them, non fiction especially. I know what it feels like when an author takes you to a new place - when an author takes himself to a new place and you're just lucky to be part of the ride, as his path to that new place was through writing. This is not it. Its no soul in it, its no heart, no right brain, no poetry, no art, no emotion. It feels like homework. It feels like someone doing something not out of passion but out of a duty to follow a contract.

And that is to piss on the psychedelic experience, which is probably the most holy thing that we have physical access to. It is a portal to something else, no words and no arguments changes that fact once you've felt it.

Yet philosophy and psychedelics are not antinomies, McKenna managed to fuse them. But McKenna wasnt't a professor, he was a philosopher! He read, traveled, read everything and anything of quality, he fed his mind only the best. A mind fed on articles from journals naturally won't produce any gold. An infinite amount of shit will never be gold. No amount of data nor input produces quality, quality is a synthesis, its creation. Borrowing quotes from others doesn't constitute that.





Anyway, thanks for the cathasis Chris Letheby, it felt really good to get it out of my system. Maybe you're some sort of genius, that at the meta-meta-meta level knew that you would invoke such rage in some reader as myself. Doubtful. I'd say its likely an important step for someone on some step of their journey though. However, to really be able to say anything about the experience you have to have had it. I wouldn't claim to know anything essential about what it is like to give birth, based on the testimony of others, would I? Skin in the game.

You know what the dynamic is like? That of the art critic vis-a-vis the artist. This guy is not the artist.

[Mariana Sanchez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's the thing, he's trying to make the Psychedelic experience more palatable by SHOVING it into the naturalistic worldview to make the academic community more comfortable with the inconvenient hippie 'woo woo' shit within it. I LOATHED how unsexy and deductive it all was!

Considering that both philosophy and psychedelics are innately MIND EXPANDING, using methodological naturalism to explain away scintillating phenomenological states, is CHEAP! It echoed a deeply Western understanding about the nature of reality, and was completely dismissive of the indigenous history of these compounds. I can't imagine trying to explain all of this to a Shipibo shaman, it's like maaaddddd disrespectful to treat the mystical aspect that are unique to these compounds as an inconvenience, or one that can be brushed under the rug, just like Letheby did in hundreds of pages!

Even still, I am of the mind that Psychedelics SHOULD be in the drinking water, so any advocacy gets a thumbs up from me! So while I appreciate Letheby's conclusion, I hate how he got there.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my philosophy of psychology class, where we focused on psychedelic drug therapy. In the midst of writing my final paper on set & setting, one area that I don’t think Letheby spends enough time on. I’m not on board with epistemic innocence or the predictive processing model, but those factors do not undermine the author entirely. He successfully defended psychedelic therapy in the face of the comforting delusion objection. Also not on board with naturalistic spirituality, but the book is incredibly well-rounded, researched and otherwise convincing.

[Lucas Cavalcanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The general idea of this book is that psychedelic therapy (or psychedelic experiences at large), when carefully implemented, can have a lot of benefits and, furthermore, these benefits are consistent with a naturalistic worldview. That is, although people often report mystical-type experiences, that's not always the case and, even when it is, the underlying causation for the benefits is not a supernatural experience, but rather events explainable by natural sciences such as a suspension of the firmly, unconscious-held beliefs that guide and constrain our brain's interpretation of the world and of ourselves. The suspension of these a priori (and largely unconscious) beliefs, which can be partly explained at the molecular level by neuroscience, has the effect of allowing our brains to apprehend the world and ourselves in a more free manner, free of typical assumptions. This, in turn, allows for experiencing a state of mind very different from the daily state of mind.

It's a well-known fact that our minds work by making probabilistic assumptions of the world, which are normally effective in guiding our actions in it. However, although we know it, we normally don't experience it. That is, our perception of the world is a constructed model generated by our brain or an illusion to an extent. We know it. But we don't experience it. We experience the perceptions as if they are the real world, objectively, we don't think "this is a representation of a table build by my brain, based on previously held assumptions and previous experiences, as well as on the inputs of my senses, thus this is not 100% accurate, but good enough to guide my actions". We merely think "this is a table". This sort of thing can be more clearly observed with visual illusions, when we perceive things to be one thing when they are, in fact, another thing. And even when we know the truth of an illusion, we can't help but keep seeing the illusion as the real thing. That is, our brain keeps representing it mistakenly.

So, basically, our brains are constrained by a priori assumptions and by biochemical factors to perceive the world and ourselves in certain ways. These ways, however, are not the only ways to perceive things. What psychedelics do is: they temporarily suspend these a priori assumptions (most of which are unconscious) and, in doing that, they enable our brains to perceive things differently. In some ways, these changes are negative (e.g. you shouldn't drive under the influence bc your brain might have a different sense of space and time). But, in other ways, these changes are very positive, as when a smoker, under the influence of a psychedelic in a high enough dose, has the "smoker" part of his identity suspended and can immediately quit smoking after that experience because he realizes perceiving himself as a smoker is not the only way to perceive himself, it's just one of the many ways, one that became ingrained in his unconscious. But it's very different knowing this by reading or by being told and knowing it by experiencing it.

Psychedelics are powerful and can have lasting, even permanent, benefits to people because, for a few hours, they allow the subjects to experience the world and the self in a new way. So, even after the effect goes away and the drug is eliminated of their system, the subject retains the knowledge that our day-to-day state of mind is not the only one possible. For instance, the very sense of "self" is an illusion, it's a binding entity that our unconscious use to differentiate between things that are relevant to "us" and thus deserve attention and things that are not relevant to "us" and thus don't deserve attention. In practice, the "self" is a construct that helps our brains make decisions more efficiently, that is, more quickly and with less energy, which increases our survivability. Under psychedelics, one can realize that the "self", or at least the normal, big, and egotistical "self" doesn't exist, that it's just one construction of our minds. Hence, it's not a fixed entity. It's actually mutable. You can, in other words, construct it differently. This is not a trivial claim. However, one thing is to read or hear it. A different thing is to experience it. To experience existing in a world not constrained by all the presuppositions about the world and about the self.

That's the most important thing in the book. Though, of course, there is a lot more, all of which is developed in more detail and more competently than I am able to replicate here. The book certainly is worth the time. However, it's not a fun read. It's quite boring at times. Some sections are also really difficult, especially due to the use of heavy jargon in some parts, from neuroscience and philosophy. It's also very repetitive, though it's not the kind of useless repetition. In fact, it aids the overall understanding of the author's reasoning line by keeping fresh in the reader's memory all the previous parts of a complex argument. The general investigation is really interesting, without a doubt. However, it's a philosophy book. As such, it's on the edge of what we know through science. In order words, there are claims that cannot be backed by evidence, though they are clearly flagged as so. And it's the case not because the author aims to mislead or spread false information, but merely because there is certain knowledge that we are yet to access through science, if ever, such as the nature of consciousness and how exactly psychedelic drugs work in our brain. The relevant research, however, is extensively discussed. It's in the gaps that the author has something original to say.

[Beau Jaco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well argued and I actually loved reading it, was just great to see so many aspects and thoughts broken down so clearly. The Predicitve Processing chapter was a bit of a slog but seriously a lot of great insight here for critically minded trippers and mental health professionals. Not a lot about metaphysics but that was never the goal, this is an analytic/philosophy of science work as far as I can tell and it was flippin sweet.

Great overview of the literature up to the point of writing, the field is moving so fast these days.

A reference work and conversation starter for sure. Would recommend to people who are serious about understanding the psychedelic experience and the utility of it whilst speaking in terms that people not steeped in personal experience with psychs (with the accompanying esoteric vocabulary and metaphysical claims that can result from such experiences) can understand.

If people want serious responses to the content of the book and the numerous thoughtful arguments that are put forward then here is a link to a series of philosophical articles addressing certain points with a response by Letheby.

https://philosophymindscience.org/ind...

[Zach Toad · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is mounting evidence that a single psychedelic trip, under the supervision of a therapist, can treat a variety of mental conditions such as alcoholism, nicotine addiction, depression, and anxiety. Letheby’s primary goal in this book is to answer a recurring worry about this kind of treatment. He calls it “Comforting Delusion Objection”: the ethical and epistemological concern that psychedelics engender their therapeutic benefits through instilling metaphysical beliefs that are comforting but false (p. 28-33). Users of psychedelics, after all, are well known to profess beliefs in all sorts of new-age, pseudo-philosophical ideas, entities, and realms, beliefs that seem in tension with much of modern science and philosophy, and especially with views like atheism, naturalism, and physicalism. Letheby works meticulously throughout the book to show that psychedelic benefits do not depend in any essential way on non-naturalistic metaphysical beliefs. He develops what he calls a comprehensive “natural philosophy” of psychedelics, which draws on empirical and philosophical resources to neutralize the Comforting Delusion Objection.

Not only am I deeply impressed with the rigor and detail of Letheby's arguments—I am convinced his conclusions are true. He argues insightfully that the primary agent of change in this form of therapy hinges on participants’ reconstructing an understanding of their *selves* through the psychedelic experience. Psychedelics promote the acquisition of a new autobiographical perspective, loosening the previously unshakable habits, limiting beliefs, and inveterate fears that held us back in the past. Based on a new self-understanding, participants make marked improvements to the patterns of thought that were once ingrained in their identity and detrimental to their mental health (pp. 124-159). This explains the incredible effectiveness of the therapy in treating a variety of mental disorders. Letheby concludes that psychedelic treatment is ethically and epistemologically permissible because its primary mechanism of action resides in a new understanding of self. It need not instill comforting delusions to be successful.

There is too much to say about Letheby’s fascinating work. Centering the book around the Comforting Delusion Objection is ingenious: it allows Letheby to touch on many of the most interesting and important aspects of these substances in well-ordered way. His middle chapters are worth reading alone for their detailed and clear account of the "Hierarchical Predictive Processing" model of the brain and the "self-binding account" within it. But what interested me most throughout the work was all of the parallels drawn to meditation and mindfulness. Letheby speculates that psychedelics and mindfulness must work in similar ways, as mystics and psychonauts have been announcing for decades.

Perhaps their most striking parallel is the “naturalized spirituality” that can be built out of each of them. Not only do research trials involving psychedelics show extraordinary promise in treating addiction, depression, and anxiety in the terminally ill, but—just as remarkably—participants reliably rank the psychedelic experience they undergo as among the most profound and meaningful events of their lives (Griffiths et al., 2006). Participants have compared the significance of their experiences to events like the birth of their children (p. 277). Mystics say similar things about experiences while meditating, and, of course, meditation has been shown an effective treatment of many of same mental conditions as psychedelics.

Letheby argues that the deep meaning participants derive from these experiences can be accommodated by focusing on the characterological changes they bring about:

"Through radically altered forms of self-experience, subjects discover the contingency,
mutability, and simulatory nature of their own sense of identity and habitual modes of attention. They learn directly that there are other ways of being, and other ways of seeing, because their ordinary ways of being and seeing result from a malleable modeling process. (Letheby, 2021, p. 125)

The experience paves the way for profound personal changes. Quitting alcohol, or cigarettes, cold turkey, after years of abusing those substances, is after all a profound change. And phenomenologically, the participants find all new kinds of beauty and wonder in themselves and in the world. In fact, blind raters have been found unable to distinguish between reports of mystical experiences that occur spontaneously and those that are induced by psychedelics (Smith, 1964, p. 522).

These transformations are indeed promising, and the experiences may indeed feel wonderful, but why should any of this count as truly “spiritual”? We have to be careful about what we mean by the term. If being spiritual requires belief in spirits or other supernatural entities, then of course a radically altered self-understanding, though profound, doesn’t count as truly spiritual (Letheby, 2021, p. 204). But a separate definition of “spiritual” is equally legitimate. As Letheby points out, there are many contemporary writers who argue that the term can rightly apply to life’s profound dimensions and the contemplation of them: philosophical questioning, wonder, and awe; the diminishing of ego-centric concern; experiences of selflessness and sweeping gratitude (p. 198). As Letheby argues, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that the controlled, therapeutic administration of psychedelics is one highly impactful way of engaging in these kinds of “spiritual” pursuits. Collected testimony of participants seems to establish this quite firmly. When used responsibly, psychedelics give us the opportunity to transcend ourselves, open up our understanding of what is possible, and undergo transformational life changes. So does meditation. These are profound possibilities. They seem “spiritual” enough for me.

[Lucas Grozdanovski · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely convincing and informative book. Letheby offers a strong philosophical argument with great explanatory value in favour of a naturalist conception of the psychedelic experience. In integrating both neurophysiological and psychological accounts of the psychedelic experience, Letheby offers a sound, evidence based picture of psychedelics, while maintaining the profundity and power of the phenomenology of the experience.

[Lariste · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely BEWARE of Chris Letheby - a man that gives pseudoscience and the categories of navel gazing, propositional ethics and "theories of mind" popular in Philosophy discourse a patina of scientific authenticity by pretending that psychedelic drugs (DMT, psilocybin mushrooms) are therapeutic (they aren't!) and that he can relate the field of un-knowledge to his 'expertise in neurosciences' - which he readily claims isn't fully understood.

Please don't get me wrong - writers have laden books with bias and subjectivity for decades, it's part of the craft and sale of writing, but this beardy "psychedelic philosopher" has no place (NO PLACE!) in informing drug policy or mental health recovery by his conjectures in this book, or elsewhere.

Is it not the very bedrock of a philosophy paper to define a workflow of competent logic and reason? What else does the field exist for? Selling loans? In his defense, there are supporting studies suggesting people with mild (but not debilitating) mental health issues like anxiety routines, or depression of certain kinds are actually relieved of their symptoms by intoxication - but then where is the hard data on this field? What gives Letheby the right to suggest that psychiatry, a field that deals with debilitating illness, self-harm and worse can be aided by substances that are known to seriously impair mental function or actually trigger mental health episodes?

In this case, Mr Letheby (a "doctor", but of liberal arts studies), eventually suggests that forms of mysticism or "profound spiritual insight" are not compatible with Naturalism, a theory that suggests in short that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe, but then continues with more half-baked verbiage.

While his appearances in Aeon magazine and YouTube suggest Letheby has some kinda gift for public speaking and composition, his basic idea - that not-fully-understood psychedelic drugs (of abuse, or therapy) are "magical cures" for debilitating mental health conditions - should have been left on the scrapheap. An embarrassing premise, and tediously overwritten in places.

As Niko Pfund writes in the authors guide of Oxford University Press (the "distinguished" publisher of this tomb of posturing and suspicious ideas) "Welcome to Oxford University Press. As an Oxford author, you are now part of a long tradition of excellence and innovation in scholarly, professional, and general interest publishing." - to which I say UMMMMMMMMMM - and you should too! Carlos Castañeda's works appeared in Anthropology departments across America at one point, later regarded as an obvious fraud and literary poseur.

[Casper Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Letheby knows A LOT about psychedelics. This is a seriously impressive and important work, if only for the depth and breadth of the literature covered (there are 28 pages of references...), and the fact that it is perhaps the first book of its kind to really bridge the gap between (modern) academic philosophy and psychedelic research.

Despite the complexity of the content and the academic rigour retained throughout, he writes in an engaging and straightforward style, relying on arguments laid out clearly at every juncture. Yes, this strictly analytical style leaves out much of the wonder and creativity at the heart of philosophical exploration, and leads to a psychologisation of what are intrinsically multifaceted and culturally-contained phenomena, but you can't do everything in one book.

By the author's own admission, the title of the book is presumptuous and clickbait-y ('The Revolution Will Be Naturalised' would surely have been a better choice). However, it delivers what it promises: a positive account of psychedelic experiences that does not rely on 'unnatural' phenomena. The central argument lands skilfully and soberly at a similar conclusion as countless spiritual traditions and, increasingly, insightful neuroscientists and psychologists, namely that i) the self - what we 'really are' - is not what it seems to be at face value, and ii) it's possible to undergo valuable 'unselfing' experiences which demonstrate this fact.

My only real problem with the book is the essentially unquestioned commitment to strict representationalism - the idea that the mind basically consists of the manipulation of representations of the world - which rears its head throughout. Many of his arguments seem to rely on the accuracy of this approach (as opposed to, say, enactivism), and so it was surprising that it was taken for granted, given Letheby's otherwise firm commitment to outlining caveats, objections, and alternatives.

[David Feneis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Con un título tan sugerente esperaba una obra mucho más interesante y especulativa. Sin embargo se trata únicamente de la árida y exhaustiva defensa de una tesis, a saber: que los efectos beneficiosos sobre la salud mental de las sustancias psicodélicas no se deben a que produzcan creencias falsas.
Todo lo interesante que pueda haber en este libro para un lector no ultraespecializado podría resumirse en un breve artículo científico, o, mejor, pasando directamente al capítulo de "conclusiones" (de nada por ahorraros 300 páginas de tedio). Además, la perspectiva positivista a ultranza que impregna toda la obra deja la sensación desagradable que estos autores, al menos a mi, me producen: la de que en su intento de no pronunciar una palabra que no sea absolutamente cierta, terminan por no decir nada que sea mínimente interesante.

[Marc]

Why yes I did fall in to a rut of not picking up my kindle for 6 weeks, but I finished this finally. Fascinating stuff, and I hope to interview Chris and will edit it in to my post after.

[ben hofmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This saved my thesis

[Lukas Hofmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

“things can be otherwise”