Papers by Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic therapy and research
Frontiers in Psychology
The essential proposal of this text is that psychedelic-induced metaphysical experiences should b... more The essential proposal of this text is that psychedelic-induced metaphysical experiences should be integrated and evaluated with recourse to metaphysics. It will be argued that there is a potential extra benefit to patients in psychedelic-assisted therapy if they are provided with an optional, additional, and intelligible schema and discussion of metaphysical options at the integrative phase of the therapy. This schema (the “Metaphysics Matrix”) and a new Metaphysics Matrix Questionnaire (“MMQ”) stemming therefrom will be presented, the latter of which can also be used as an alternative or additional tool for quantitative measurement of psychedelic experience in trials. Metaphysics is not mysticism, despite some overlap; and certainly not all psychedelic experience is metaphysical or mystical—all three terms will be defined and contrasted. Thereafter psychedelic therapy will be presented and analysed in order to reveal the missing place for metaphysics. Metaphysics, with epistemolog...
On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic therapy and research
Frontiers in Psychology, 2023
The essential proposal of this text is that psychedelic-induced metaphysical experiences should b... more The essential proposal of this text is that psychedelic-induced metaphysical experiences should be integrated and evaluated with recourse to metaphysics. It will be argued that there is a potential extra benefit to patients in psychedelic-assisted therapy if they are provided with an optional, additional, and intelligible schema and discussion of metaphysical options at the integrative phase of the therapy. This schema (the “Metaphysics Matrix”) and a new Metaphysics Matrix Questionnaire (“MMQ”) stemming therefrom will be presented, the latter of which can also be used as an alternative or additional tool for quantitative measurement of psychedelic experience in trials. Metaphysics is not mysticism, despite some overlap; and certainly not all psychedelic experience is metaphysical or mystical—all three terms will be defined and contrasted. Thereafter psychedelic therapy will be presented and analysed in order to reveal the missing place for metaphysics. Metaphysics, with epistemology (theory of knowledge) and axiology (ethics and aesthetics), is a defining branch of Philosophy. Metaphysics, in contrast to mysticism, is considered to be based on argument rather than pure revelation. Thus, in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy one sees here the potential bridge between reason-based philosophy and practical therapy
Decolonization is a metaphor towards a different ethic. The case from psychedelic studies
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
Indigenous psychedelic uses have long been imbricated with colonialism and its afterlives. Amidst... more Indigenous psychedelic uses have long been imbricated with colonialism and its afterlives. Amidst tensions from accelerating investor interest in psychedelics and calls to decolonize research and practices, we argue that the study of psychedelics is troubled by dualisms used in both colonial and decolonial thought: subject and object, self and other, culture and nature, synthetic and natural, the colonizer and the indigenous, the literal and the metaphorical. Feminist and decolonial theory as well as a discussion of metaphor support our argument that the study of psychedelics often lacks critical engagement with these dualisms. A narrow understanding of coloniality hinders far-reaching critiques of contemporary capitalism, including progressive colonization of the life-world and commodification of psychedelic experiences. Fears that decolonization is becoming just a ‘metaphor’ implicitly reaffirm the conceptual power dynamics of colonization. In research on psychedelics, decolonization as a critical metaphor enables reassessing problematic distinctions that shape thinking, material realities, experiences.
The concrescence of dissent
Heresy and Borders in the Twentieth Century, 2021
Philosophy itself often arrives as a mind-altering experience, a new mode of perception unto our ... more Philosophy itself often arrives as a mind-altering experience, a new mode of perception unto our cosmos, at times so radical as to be hazardous. Thus can philosophy be seen as a psychoactive substance-yet the place of psychoactive substances in philosophy is not apparent. In this mildly chronological overview we shall shed light upon the history of the notable western philosophers who took psychedelic chemicals and how this may have influenced their thought-how psychedelics influenced philosophy. Plato (c. 427-347) We begin with a radical conjecture: western philosophy was triggered by the intake of psychedelics: Plato's philosophy was inspired by psychedelic intake, and western philosophy was inspired by Plato. The British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) is known for claiming that, The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. 1 Plato is perhaps chiefly known for his arguments for the existence of the soul and for the subsistence of an eternal realm of Forms ('ideas' that exists beyond space and time). This pair of transcendent notions are encountered first in his book Phaedo, also known as On the Soul. Their introduction is preceded by these words: There are indeed, as those concerned with the mysteries say, many who carry the thyrsus [staff/wand] but the worshipers of Dionysus [the true mystics] are few. These latter are, in my opinion, no other than those who have practiced philosophy in the right way. I have in my life left nothing undone in order to be counted among these as far as possible… 2 We shall encounter Dionysus, the god of intoxication, later. For now we note Plato's desire to be figured among the philosophers of the Mysteries. The Mysteries were events held regularly in Ancient Greece, the most official and known of which were the Eleusinian Mysteries which Plato attended-held at Eleusis, a dozen miles or so from Athens. There, at the Temple of Demeter, participants would drink a potionkykeon-containing barley, mint and water. It is widely believed that the kykeon contained too a psychedelic element. What that element was is widely contested, that it was psychedelic is less contested. Dr Albert Hofmann, the creator of LSD, argued that the compound was derived from the barley parasite fungus ergot, from which LSD is also derived. Hofmann writes, [We can] assume that the barley grown [in the Rarian plain] was host to an ergot containing … the soluble hallucinogenic alkaloids. The famous Rarian
The word panpsychism is a Renaissance compound 2 of Ancient Greek pan (all) and psyche (mind, or ... more The word panpsychism is a Renaissance compound 2 of Ancient Greek pan (all) and psyche (mind, or soul). It is thus the doctrine that minds exist fundamentally 3 throughout all of actuality 4-from humans, to hawks, honeybees through to trees, down to bacteria, mycelia, molecules, and the subatomic below these. All of matter includes minds. Panpsychism is, in itself, a secular doctrine unlike pantheism (that nature is God) and unlike animism 5 (that rivers and winds, etc., each have a spirit). It is generally unlike idealism in that it takes matter to be real 6 rather than ideal (as mere projection of the mind); it is generally unlike dualism in that it does not take mind to be separate from matter, but rather takes mind to be a part of matter; 7 and it is unlike physicalism as understood to imply that most matter be insentient. 8 Panpsychism differentiates within the suffix psyche a vast variety of states of sentience, and it mostly attributes sentience to autopoietic (self-systematic) entities such as organisms and molecules, rather than to aggregates thereof, such as rocks and radiators. In the hierarchy of states of mind, 'consciousness' is an uncommon complex crown of sentience. All has mind though not all has consciousness, let alone self-consciousness. Even Plato acknowledged such distinctions, stating that:
The White Sun of Substance: Spinozism and the Psychedelic amor Dei intellectualis
Philosophy and Psychedelics
Conspectus of J. R. Smythies' Theories of Mind, Matter, and N-Dimensional Space
Conspectus of part of John R. Smythies' Analysis of Perception (1956). It presents a summary ... more Conspectus of part of John R. Smythies' Analysis of Perception (1956). It presents a summary of his ideas on phenomenal space – the space of one’s imagination, dreams, psychedelic experiences, somatic sensations, visions, hynagogia, etc. – and its relation to physical space
Book Review – Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game
Intellectual Intuition in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism: The Limits of Self-Consciousness
Master's Dissertation (Awarded Distinction from Warwick University – assessed by Professo... more Master's Dissertation (Awarded Distinction from Warwick University – assessed by Professors Stephen Houlgate and Christine Battersby, 2002)
The Great God Pan is Not Dead – A. N. Whitehead and the Psychedelic Mode of Perception
Through Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics, the Philosophy of Organism, it will be argued that ... more Through Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics, the Philosophy of Organism, it will be argued that psychedelic experience is a vertical, lateral and temporal integration of sentience. This paper was published in the Psychedelic Press Journal, issue XX (February 2017), pp. 47–65.
Pansentient Monism: Formulating Panpsychism as a Genuine Psycho-Physical Identity Theory [PhD thesis: Abstract & Contents Pages]
The thesis that follows proffers a solution to the mind-matter problem, the problem as to how min... more The thesis that follows proffers a solution to the mind-matter problem, the problem as to how mind and matter relate. The proposed solution herein is a variant of panpsychism – the theory that all (pan) has minds (psyche) – that we name pansentient monism. By defining the suffix 'psyche' of panpsychism, i.e. by analysing what 'mind' is (Chapter 1), we thereby initiate the effacement of the distinction between mind and matter, and thus advance a monism. We thereafter critically examine the prevalent view, antithetical to a pansentient monism, that mind is not identical to matter but emergent therefrom (Chapter 2). This anti-emergentist critique acts also as a fortification of the Genetic Argument for panpsychism: if mind is not emergent (nor distinct) from matter, mind must always have existed with matter. But what is 'matter'? Chapter 3 investigates what we understand by 'matter', or 'the physical', and exposes it as a highly deficient concept and percept that in concreto points to its identity with that denoted by 'mind'. This also acts as a fortification of the Abstraction Argument for panpsychism, employing a new taxonomy of physicalism and a new taxonomy of the varieties of abstraction. Thus do we reach a monism that is a parsimonious psycho-physical identity theory. But here we face what can be called The Identity Problem for Panpsychism: if our panpsychism is a psycho-physical identity theory, how can it respond to the powerful objections that beset the identity theory of the twentieth century? In Chapter 4 it will be argued that, like emergentism, this psycho-neural identity theory presupposed a deficient concept of 'matter', down to which mind was reduced away, let alone identified. But to identify down phenomena to what is actually an abstraction is to commit failure of explanation. When the theory is amended accordingly, we move from a psycho-neural identity theory to a genuine psycho-physical identity theory that as such can overcome the aforementioned identity problem. Furthermore, as Chapter 5 clarifies, our pansentient monism has, in addition to parsimony, the explanatory power to resolve the problem of mental causation that afflicts both the reductive physicalism of psycho-neural identity theory and the non-reductive physicalism of emergentism, by genuinely identifying physical and mental causation. Jaegwon Kim considers the place of consciousness in a physical world and the nature of mental causation to be the two key components of the mind-matter problem. Through the critical analysis of our prosaic understanding of mind and matter in this thesis, which incorporates the thought of both classical and contemporary thinkers through a novel fusion, it is hoped that both components are addressed and redressed. That is to say that I present this pansentient monism as a plausible, parsimonious, explanatory, and thus, I think, powerful position towards this ever-perplexing mind-matter mystery. [This thesis was passed in January 2019 with viva examination from Galen Strawson and Joel Krueger. Supervised by Tom Roberts, Michael Hauskeller, and John Dupré.]
The concrescence of dissent
This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that s... more This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that sentience is a fundamental and ubiquitous element of actuality. Thereafter is presented a brief exploration of why panpsychism has been spurned.
The article was commissioned by High Existence.
– Introduction
– 1. The Genetic Argument
– 2. The Abstraction Argument
– 3. The Inferential Argument
– Why Panpsychism is Spurned
– End Remarks
Originally published 15 January 2018: http://highexistence.com/panpsychism-3-reasons-why-our-world-brimming-sentience/ [note different subtitle]
Accompanying audio version: https://youtu.be/B7B_RmZQp5Q
©Peter Sjöstedt-H 2018
A mildly chronological overview of the philosophers who may have been inspired by the use of psyc... more A mildly chronological overview of the philosophers who may have been inspired by the use of psychoactive chemicals, inc. Plato, de Quincey, Davy, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Bergson, Benjamin, Jünger, Paz, Marcuse, Sartre, Foucault; and a mention of the Outsight project.
This article was based on a talk given for the University of Exeter Philosophy Society (video: https://youtu.be/X2eY4n37FC0) and at the ICPR2016 conference. It was published in the popular HighExistence magazine on August 2nd 2016, and has received over 90 000 social media shares (http://highexistence.com/hidden-psychedelic-influence-philosophy-plato-nietzsche-psychonauts-thoughts).
Reference:
Sjöstedt-H, P. 'The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy', HighExistence.com (2nd-08-2016)
'Peter Sjöstedt-H introduces Whitehead’s organic awareness of reality.'
Philosophy Now, no. 114,... more 'Peter Sjöstedt-H introduces Whitehead’s organic awareness of reality.'
Philosophy Now, no. 114, June/July 2016, pp. 22–23
I was asked by Philosophy Now magazine whether I'd like to contribute an article on speculative realism. I offered instead this article on A. N. Whitehead's organic realism. Consequently the overview of Whitehead's philosophy emphasises the realist aspects—more theological aspects are avoided. Peer-reviewed.
www.philosophynow.org/issues/114/The_Philosophy_of_Organism
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Papers by Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
Peter Sjöstedt-H interview for 3:am Magazine
Interview by Richard Marshall and Lindsay Jordan.
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/noumenaut-psychedelics-philosophy
May 2017
The article was commissioned by High Existence.
– Introduction
– 1. The Genetic Argument
– 2. The Abstraction Argument
– 3. The Inferential Argument
– Why Panpsychism is Spurned
– End Remarks
Originally published 15 January 2018: http://highexistence.com/panpsychism-3-reasons-why-our-world-brimming-sentience/ [note different subtitle]
Accompanying audio version: https://youtu.be/B7B_RmZQp5Q
©Peter Sjöstedt-H 2018
First published in the Psychedelic Press Journal, vol. XII, then as chapter VI in Noumenautics, and thereafter as an online article on HighExistence.com. Respectively:
https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/products/psychedelic-press-uk-journal-2015-volume-iv?mc_cid=bb137e4065&mc_eid=385faf533c
https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/collections/display-titles/products/noumenautics
http://highexistence.com/antichrist-psychonaut-nietzsche-psychoactive-drugs/
This article was based on a talk given for the University of Exeter Philosophy Society (video: https://youtu.be/X2eY4n37FC0) and at the ICPR2016 conference. It was published in the popular HighExistence magazine on August 2nd 2016, and has received over 90 000 social media shares (http://highexistence.com/hidden-psychedelic-influence-philosophy-plato-nietzsche-psychonauts-thoughts).
Reference:
Sjöstedt-H, P. 'The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy', HighExistence.com (2nd-08-2016)
Philosophy Now, no. 114, June/July 2016, pp. 22–23
I was asked by Philosophy Now magazine whether I'd like to contribute an article on speculative realism. I offered instead this article on A. N. Whitehead's organic realism. Consequently the overview of Whitehead's philosophy emphasises the realist aspects—more theological aspects are avoided. Peer-reviewed.
www.philosophynow.org/issues/114/The_Philosophy_of_Organism
Peter Sjöstedt-H interview for 3:am Magazine
Interview by Richard Marshall and Lindsay Jordan.
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/noumenaut-psychedelics-philosophy
May 2017
The article was commissioned by High Existence.
– Introduction
– 1. The Genetic Argument
– 2. The Abstraction Argument
– 3. The Inferential Argument
– Why Panpsychism is Spurned
– End Remarks
Originally published 15 January 2018: http://highexistence.com/panpsychism-3-reasons-why-our-world-brimming-sentience/ [note different subtitle]
Accompanying audio version: https://youtu.be/B7B_RmZQp5Q
©Peter Sjöstedt-H 2018
First published in the Psychedelic Press Journal, vol. XII, then as chapter VI in Noumenautics, and thereafter as an online article on HighExistence.com. Respectively:
https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/products/psychedelic-press-uk-journal-2015-volume-iv?mc_cid=bb137e4065&mc_eid=385faf533c
https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/collections/display-titles/products/noumenautics
http://highexistence.com/antichrist-psychonaut-nietzsche-psychoactive-drugs/
This article was based on a talk given for the University of Exeter Philosophy Society (video: https://youtu.be/X2eY4n37FC0) and at the ICPR2016 conference. It was published in the popular HighExistence magazine on August 2nd 2016, and has received over 90 000 social media shares (http://highexistence.com/hidden-psychedelic-influence-philosophy-plato-nietzsche-psychonauts-thoughts).
Reference:
Sjöstedt-H, P. 'The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy', HighExistence.com (2nd-08-2016)
Philosophy Now, no. 114, June/July 2016, pp. 22–23
I was asked by Philosophy Now magazine whether I'd like to contribute an article on speculative realism. I offered instead this article on A. N. Whitehead's organic realism. Consequently the overview of Whitehead's philosophy emphasises the realist aspects—more theological aspects are avoided. Peer-reviewed.
www.philosophynow.org/issues/114/The_Philosophy_of_Organism
[Recorded 26 October 2018; published 16 January 2019]
This took place at Noden in Stockholm. Thanks to the NPV.
Join Sjöstedt-H on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ontologistics
www.philosopher.eu
Transcript: www.academia.edu/23885796/A_Conspectus_of_A._N._Whiteheads_Metaphysics
This review was published online on 13 June 2019: http://psypressuk.com/2019/06/13/alien-information-theory-gallimore/
[This thesis was passed in January 2019 with viva examination from Galen Strawson and Joel Krueger. Supervised by Tom Roberts, Michael Hauskeller, and John Dupré.]