Psychedelics and environmental virtues

Kirkham, Nin; Letheby, Chris

doi:10.1080/09515089.2022.2057290

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 70 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The possibility of self-transcendent value changes is a prominent reason why psychedelics might be useful as a pharmacological means to enhance humans' moral state (Earp et al, 2017;Earp, 2018). The proposed framework could unify and enrich many proposals in the psychedelic moral enhancement literature (Tennison, 2012;Ahlskog, 2017;Earp, 2018, 18-19;Ballesteros, 2019;Germann, 2019;Lange and Marie, 2021;Kirkham and Letheby, 2022).…”

Section: Societal Implications and Moral Neuroenhancementmentioning

confidence: 95%

Psychedelic unselfing: self-transcendence and change of values in psychedelic experiences

Kähönen

2023

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Psychedelic experiences have been shown to both facilitate (re)connection to one’s values and change values, including enhancing aesthetic appreciation, promoting pro-environmental attitudes, and encouraging prosocial behavior. This article presents an empirically informed framework of philosophical psychology to understand how self-transcendence relates to psychedelic value changes. Most of the observed psychedelic value changes are toward the self-transcendent values of Schwartz’s value theory. As psychedelics also reliably cause various self-transcendent experiences (STEs), a parsimonious hypothesis is that STEs change values toward self-transcendent values. I argue that STEs indeed can lead to value changes, and discuss the morally relevant process of self-transcendence through Iris Murdoch’s concept of “unselfing”. I argue that overt egocentric concerns easily bias one’s valuations. Unselfing reduces egocentric attributions of salience and enhances non-egocentric attention to the world, widening one’s perspective and shifting evaluation toward self-transcendent modes. Values are inherently tied to various evaluative contexts, and unselfing can attune the individual to evaluative contexts and accompanying values beyond the self. Understood this way, psychedelics can provide temporarily enhanced access to self-transcendent values and function as sources of aspiration and value change. However, contextual factors can complicate whether STEs lead to long-term changes in values. The framework is supported by various research strands establishing empirical and conceptual connections between long-term differences in egocentricity, STEs, and self-transcendent values. Furthermore, the link between unselfing and value changes is supported by phenomenological and theoretical analysis of psychedelic experiences, as well as empirical findings on their long-term effects. This article furthers understanding of psychedelic value changes and contributes to discussions on whether value changes are justified, whether they result from cultural context, and whether psychedelics could function as tools of moral neuroenhancement.

show abstract

Section: Societal Implications and Moral Neuroenhancementmentioning

confidence: 95%

Psychedelic unselfing: self-transcendence and change of values in psychedelic experiences

Kähönen

2023

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The relatively recent and rapid development of virtue ethical approaches to the ethics of the environment provides clear support for this claim-there now exists an extensive body of literature explicating EVE [18][19][20][21]. While the question of what particular character dispositions might be established as environmental virtues is beyond the scope of this paper, an increasingly rich literature on this topic is being developed in this area and, indeed, on the question of how we might best cultivate such virtues [16,[22][23][24].…”

Section: From Nature To Environment and Technology-related Virtues An...mentioning

confidence: 92%

A Virtue Ethics Interpretation of the ‘Argument from Nature’ for Both Humans and the Environment

Kirkham

2024

Philosophies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Appeals to the moral value of nature and naturalness are commonly used in debates about technology and the environment and to inform our approach to the ethics of technology and the environment more generally. In this paper, I will argue, firstly, that arguments from nature, as they are used in debates about new technologies and about the environment, are misinterpreted when they are understood as attempting to put forward categorical objections to certain human activities and, consequently, their real significance is often overlooked. Secondly, arguments from nature, particularly as they are used in the context of debates over the use of new technologies, can be understood as appealing to human nature as a way to determine human limitations. Thirdly, arguments from nature can inform our discussion of what it is to be a human being or a person, and this kind of discussion can, in turn, inform our ethical deliberations in such areas of bioethics as euthanasia, abortion, etc. Finally, I conclude that a proper understanding of these arguments can help in establishing which virtues and which vices relate to our relationship with the non-human world—that is, which character dispositions are relevant to an environmental virtue ethics, with human nature as its foundation. A proper understanding of the argument from nature provides the basis for a ‘virtuously anthropocentric’ environmental ethics.

show abstract

“…Bradbrook also stated that psychedelics played a fundamental role in her personal journey towards founding the movement. Scholarship on psychedelics and its role in environmentalism has gone even further, with arguments made that ‘pro-environmental behaviors’ might be elicited through controlled administration of psychedelic drugs as a ‘form of moral bioenhancement’ (Kirkham & Letheby, 2022, p. 2).…”

Section: Psychedelics and The Political: A Partial Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Acid feminism: Gender, psychonautics and the politics of consciousness

Dymock

2023

The Sociological Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Psychedelic substances have undergone a transformation in the public consciousness over the last 15 years. However, the most influential first-person narratives of psychonauts and ‘scientist-shamans’ navigating the frontiers of consciousness have tended to entirely exclude women’s experiences and voices. Psychedelic feminism, has emerged to signify the role consciousness expansion and experimentation might play in rejuvenating feminism’s collective imagination, and undoing the historical silencing of women’s voices in psychedelic culture and research. Drawing on Mark Fisher’s work on acid communism, the feminist psychedelic humanities, narcofeminism and autobiographical life-writing by women on experimental psychedelic substance use, this article investigates the promise of acid feminism for the wider narcofeminist movement, and its implications for undoing some key precepts endemic in psychedelic culture and research.

show abstract

Psychedelics and environmental virtues

Cited by 6 publications

References 70 publications

Psychedelic unselfing: self-transcendence and change of values in psychedelic experiences

Psychedelic unselfing: self-transcendence and change of values in psychedelic experiences

A Virtue Ethics Interpretation of the ‘Argument from Nature’ for Both Humans and the Environment

Acid feminism: Gender, psychonautics and the politics of consciousness

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About