The hyperassociative mind: The psychedelic experience and Merleau-Ponty’s “wild being”

Szummer, Csaba; Horváth, Lajos; Szabó, Attila; Frecska, Ede; Orzói, Kristóf

doi:10.1556/2054.01.2017.006

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Letheby claims that psychedelic experience may be viewed as beneficial and complementary to the naturalist view, perhaps even if accompanied by ceremonial practice. Viveiros de Castro's suggestion is to view psychedelics as a material technology of imagination, which is quite similar to what Csaba Szummer and colleagues propose (Szummer et al, 2017), and psychedelic experience as revealing not the spiritual, but the virtual; the subtle difference is in the indeterminacy of the corporeal and spiritual spheres, like in the conceptual amalgamation in the term of cha-osmos (Viveiros de Castro, 2014a, p. 65-66). To illustrate this point we will refer to the myth of the origin of Ayahuasca from western Amazonia, as it is interpreted by Viveiros de Castro:…”

Section: Of Pharmakonmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…In an interview, he said (Danowski et al, 2021, p. 320) Viveiros de Castro would rather speak of material technology of imagination and refer to the virtuality of experience. It indicates the application of specific anthropological epoche, characteristic of the ontological turn, of reducing one's presuppositions, inherited from the western culture, which makes this approach relatively close to and coextensive with Husserl's phenomenology, a philosophy hailed by some psychedelists as particularly suitable for the field (Lundborg, 2016;Szummer et al, 2017). According to some theorists, the ontological turn is a radical continuation and refinement of phenomenology in the anthropological crucible (Pedersen, 2020).…”

Section: Of Pharmakonmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Of pharmakon: Hallucination in Amerindian perspectivism and speculative materialism

Šatkauskas

2022

JPS

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Aims The paper discusses the concepts of hallucination and psychedelic experience in philosophical and anthropological contexts, where these terms bring in presuppositions regarding body and soul, nature and culture. Method The discussion of the concepts is presented in the context of the debate between Viveiros de Castro's Amerindian perspectivism and Meillassoux's speculative materialism, where in the former the concepts have undergone an anthropological epoché in addressing the problematic presuppositions of unreality and in the latter hallucination and related concepts appear in a canonical western sense as imitations of the real. Results This debate appears to be closely related to the project of naturalization of spirituality. The critique also extends to concepts such as psychedelic and entheogen. In respect to certain indigenous concepts like kepigari of the Matsigenka, observed in anthropology (Shepard, 2018; Danowski, Viveiros de Castro, 2021) and by revisiting Derrida's Plato's Pharmacy (1981) we suggest that the philosopheme of pharmakon suits the role of proximity with indigenous thought for comparative analyses and offers a perspective for psychedelic philosophy. Conclusions The suggestion of considering psychedelics as an existential medicine (Letheby, 2017) could be interpreted as offering a pharmakon with ambiguous, indeterminate possibilities which would emphasize its theoretical soundness.

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Section: Of Pharmakonmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Of Pharmakonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Of pharmakon: Hallucination in Amerindian perspectivism and speculative materialism

Šatkauskas

2022

JPS

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“…The heterogeneity of factors subsumed under existing analyses, combined with the lack of a clearly articulated typology, highlight the need for a unified and comprehensive approach to analysing the experiences of PAP. While some studies have used phenomenological concepts to understand psychedelic experiences, most have relied on data collected without the use of phenomenologically guided qualitative methods and have not considered these experiences within clinical contexts (Horváth et al, 2018;Houot, 2021;Szabo et al, 2014;Szummer et al, 2017). In what follows, we outline a The philosophical tradition of phenomenology is typically characterised as a selfreflective method for articulating the fundamental structures of experience or consciousness, including affectivity, embodiment, empathy, temporality, spatiality, and selfhood.…”

Section: Qualitative Approaches and The Promise Of Phenomenologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding subjective experience in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: The need for phenomenology

McMillan

Fernandez

2022

Aust N Z J Psychiatry

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Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is being investigated as a treatment for a range of psychiatric illnesses. Current research suggests that the kinds of subjective experiences induced by psychedelic compounds play key roles in producing therapeutic outcomes. To date, most knowledge of therapeutic psychedelic experiences are derived from psychometric assessments with scales such as the Mystical Experience Questionnaire. While these approaches are insightful, more nuanced and detailed descriptions of psychedelic-induced changes to subjective experience are required. Drawing on recent advancements in qualitative methods arising from the interdisciplinary field of phenomenological psychopathology, we propose a systematic and comprehensive investigation into how psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy alters subjective experience. This research programme aims to characterise the nature of therapeutic psychedelic experiences by drawing on concepts from philosophical phenomenology. Such characterisations should, moreover, contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms of psychedelic therapy, the role of integration therapy, and related philosophical debates.

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“…In contrast, others have suggested that psychedelic evidence might aid ongoing efforts to solve the so-called "Hard Problem of Consciousness" within a physicalist framework (Brogaard & Gatzia, 2016a), and explanations of key psychedelic phenomena have been offered in terms of empirically-based theories of phenomenal consciousness (Gallimore, 2015;Grinde & Stewart, 2020;O'Brien & Opie, 2015). Another project involves the use of conceptual tools from the phenomenological tradition in philosophy to analyse and describe the psychedelic state, thereby putatively advancing the project of classical phenomenology itself (Horváth, Szummer, & Szabo, 2018;Szummer et al, 2017Szummer et al, , 2019. Finally, Brogaard and colleagues have used data from psychedelic neuroscience to develop empirically-informed philosophical accounts of mental phenomena such as synaesthesia (Brogaard, 2013;Brogaard & Gatzia, 2016b) and attention (Kentridge & Brogaard, 2017).…”

Section: Other Issues In Philosophy Of Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

Philosophy and classic psychedelics: A review of some emerging themes

Letheby

Mattu

2022

JPS

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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 paper, we highlight philosophical questions concerning (i) psychedelics, self-consciousness, and phenomenal consciousness, (ii) the epistemic profile of the psychedelic experience; (iii) ethical concerns about the appropriate use of psychedelics; and (iv) whether spiritual or religious dimensions of psychedelic use are compatible with a naturalistic worldview.

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The hyperassociative mind: The psychedelic experience and Merleau-Ponty’s “wild being”

Cited by 11 publications

References 9 publications

Of pharmakon: Hallucination in Amerindian perspectivism and speculative materialism

Of pharmakon: Hallucination in Amerindian perspectivism and speculative materialism

Understanding subjective experience in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: The need for phenomenology

Philosophy and classic psychedelics: A review of some emerging themes

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