From Altered States to Metaphysics: The Epistemic Status of Psychedelic-induced Metaphysical Beliefs

Today's post is by Paweł Gładziejewski (Nicolaus Copernicus University) on his recent paper, "From Altered States to Metaphysics: The Epistemic Status of Psychedelic-induced Metaphysical Beliefs"  (Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2023).

 Paweł Gładziejewski 

Psychedelic experiences sometimes lead people to revise their belief systems in far-reaching ways. My paper deals with the epistemic status of a particular class of beliefs that people sometimes acquire after a psychedelic session. These are the metaphysical beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality itself. Imagine someone in a deep psychedelic state, where their usual sense of self dissolves into an all-encompassing unity lacking an subject-object distinction. Chances are that the experience will inspire this person to modify her beliefs about the existence of God or the relation between consciousness and the physical world. Is updating metaphysical beliefs in this manner epistemically irrational? Or can psychedelic states, at times, rationally lead to a new perspective on reality? If so, then how?

In my paper, I argue that psychedelic states can play a positive epistemic role in a person’s epistemic life, acting as a (fallible) source of evidence or reasons. I develop this view in three steps.

First, I propose a general account of psychedelic-induced metaphysical belief changes as stemming from an epistemically transformative experience (in a technical sense introduced by Laurie Paul in her seminal work). I point to certain epistemologically relevant aspects of such transformations. For example, they do not involve an impediment of a person’s normal critical/rational faculties (metaphysical beliefs usually crystallize and stabilize during the sober “integration” stage that follows the psychedelic trip itself). Also, such transformations are graded and often involve belief revisions that are much subtler and less epistemically risky than full-blown mystical-experience-based religious conversions.

Second, I propose that psychedelic states can be treated as forms of radical metaphysical imagination, whereby a person temporarily gains a capacity to enter conscious states that are usually unavailable for neurotypical human subjects. These exotic states disrupt the structures of normal experience - related to time, space, or self – that underpin the Sellarsian “manifest” image of the world. As such, psychedelic experiences act as a form of exploration of one’s representational repertoire. I argue that bursts of such exploration can be epistemically beneficial in the long run.

Third, I show how such exploration can yield results that are evidentially relevant for metaphysics. For example, I argue that acute psychedelic experiences can undermine appeals to normal experience made in certain metaphysical debates (e.g. about the passage of time) or that they can validate certain concepts in metaphysics that have previously been posited on purely theoretical grounds (e.g. the notion of non-dual consciousness in recent debates on cosmospychism).

My hope is that this perspective offers a nuanced alternative to other prevalent approaches to the issue at hand. These alternatives include (1) treating psychedelic-induced metaphysical beliefs as ideations lacking any rational foundation or (2) treating such beliefs as directly, non-inferentially justified by their underlying experiences. While the first option might appear preferable to philosophical naturalists, the second tends to be favored by religiously minded authors. But there is an alternative on the table, one that treats non-ordinary experiences as epistemically relevant for metaphysics but evaluates whatever evidence they provide against a broader backdrop that includes other lines of inquiry, including science and philosophical reasoning.

Interview on the journal 'Passion'

On the blog today, Kathleen speaks to Alfred Archer and Heidi Maibom about the journal 'Passion', which was launched relatively recently. Alfred and Heidi are editors-in-chief of the journal.
 

Alfred Archer

 KMH: Could you tell us a little bit about Passion, and its links to EPSSE?

AA & HM: Certainly. 2014, The European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE) has been going for ten years now and has grown into a wonderful, lively and welcoming group of scholars working on philosophical issues related to emotions. Several years ago, it was suggested that the society could look into starting its own journal . The main reason for this was that while EPSSE’s members were publishing their work in a range of philosophical and interdisciplinary journals, there was no academic journal dedicated to publishing the kinds of papers that EPSSE members were writing. Between 2017 and 2020 the executive board, then led by Achim Stephan, explored various options for starting an open access journal with commercial publishers.

When we took up our positions on the executive committee of the society (together with Joel Krueger), we decided that it would be better to look for a non-commercial publisher, as this would give a better financial deal for both the society and to the authors, as well as allowing the society to decide for itself how it wants the journal to be run. By happy coincidence, Tilburg University (where Alfred works) was just starting an initiative to encourage open science which included the start of an open access publisher, Open Press TiU. By working with Open Press TiU we are able to publish a completely open access journal that is free for both the reader and the author, and with only minimal costs for EPSSE. 

Heidi Maibom

KMH: What inspired you to start the journal?

AA & HM: We both felt that EPSSE was an inspiring group of philosophers, which every year would have a conference full of some of the most interesting philosophical work on emotions and that it was a real pity that there was no journal committed to publishing this kind of research. Having a journal would both be a major boost to the society and help draw attention to the valuable work being done by its members and others doing similarly exciting, cutting-edge, and engaged philosophical work on emotions. This feeling was shared by the other members of the executive board at the time (Max Gatyas, Joel Krueger and Lucy Osler) who are now the journal’s associate editors and who have been crucial in getting the journal started. 

KMH: What kind of topics do you hope to publish about in the journal?

AA & HM: As the title suggests, we are looking for original work on emotions. This could be papers on the nature of emotions generally or on specific emotions, such as guilt, anger, or joy. We are also interested in work on the connection between emotions and human welfare, politics, or art. We publish papers in both the philosophical traditions: analytic and continental. And although this is a philosophical journal, we are pretty ecumenical about what we take a philosophically interesting paper to be. We embrace interdisciplinarity and our own work is heavily influenced by work in fields traditionally external to philosophy, such as psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, history, anthropology, and so on. One does not have to be a card-carrying philosopher to publish in Passion, but the paper should be philosophical in nature. 

KMH: Are there any events or special issues coming up which we should keep an eye out for? 

AA & HM: At this time, we publish two issues a year. One with papers received during the normal course of events, and another which is a special issue. The special issue has historically been connected with a workshop organized in connection with the yearly meeting of EPSSE. Last year, that issue was about co-experienced emotions (which you can read here), and this year it will be on the nature of emotions, and is guest edited by Heidy Meriste. We strongly encourage anybody philosophically inclined to submit their papers to the next issue Passion, which will appear this summer..

Why it’s important to ask what forms introspection could take

In today's post, François Kammerer and Keith Frankish write about their recent special issue 'What Forms Could Introspective Systems Take?'. François is a philosopher of mind. He holds a PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris (France) and currently works as a postdoc researcher at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany). His work focuses on consciousness and introspection. 

Keith is Honorary Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK, Visiting Research Fellow at The Open University, UK, and Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete, Greece. He works mainly in the area of philosophy of mind and is well known for his 'illusionist' theory of consciousness. 

François Kammerer

Human beings can introspect. They can look inwards, as it were, at their own minds and tell what thoughts, experiences, and feelings they have. That is, they can form representations of their own current mental states. And they can put these representations to use, flexibly modifying their behaviour in response to information about their own current mental state. For example, on a shopping trip to the supermarket I might suddenly notice that I am extremely hungry. And since I intend to follow a strict diet and know that I am weak-willed, I decide to avoid the confectionery section of the store.

Human introspection has some unusual psychological and epistemological features, especially when contrasted with perception, and philosophers have devoted much time to speculating about it. How exactly does human introspection work? What sort of knowledge does it provide? However, there is a more general question that has been underexplored: What could introspection be? What are the possible ways in which cognitive systems — human or non-human, natural or artificial — could come to represent their own current mental states in a manner that allows them to use the information obtained for flexible behavioural control?

Keith Frankish

It is important to ask this question. If we don’t, we might assume that the human form of introspection is the only possible one, and that if introspection occurs in nonhuman animals, or ever develops in artificial intelligences, it will take the same basic form as our own, with some simplifications or variations. And this assumption might be wrong. For this reason, we have just edited a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to exploring the neglected question of what introspection could be.

The issue opens with an article we coauthored, titled ‘What forms could introspective systems take? A research programme’, which serves as a target for the rest of the issue. In it, we argue that the question of what forms introspection could take is an important and fruitful one, and we give a precise, workable formulation of it. The central portion of the article then seeks to provide a preliminary map of the space of possible introspective systems. 

We focus on what we call ‘introspective devices’ — possible mechanisms for producing introspective representations. We propose that such devices can be classified along several dimensions, including, (a) how direct their processing is, (b) how conceptualized their output is, and (c) how flexible their functioning is. We define an introspective system as a set of one or more introspective devices, and we propose that such systems can be ranked in terms of how unified their component devices are.

We then use these dimensions to describe a possibility space, in which one could locate the introspective devices that various theorists have ascribed to humans, as well as a huge range of possible introspective devices that other creatures might employ.

To further refine the space of possible forms of introspection, we also examine what we call ‘introspective repertoires’. An introspective repertoire is a way of grouping and characterizing the mental states that an introspective device targets. For example, human introspection arguably groups together states on the basis of what direction of fit they have, whether they are perceptual or cognitive, and whether or not they possess intentional content, and it characterizes (conceptualizes) each group as such. However, there is no reason to think that all introspective systems would employ the same groupings and characterizations as our own, and we propose a provisional way of mapping other possible introspective repertoires.

Finally, the article proposes a research programme on possible introspective systems. We identify two routes for the exploration of introspective possibilities, one focusing on cases, the other on theories. The former looks at specific cases of introspection, either real or imaginary. Adopting this route, we might examine how different groups of humans introspect, considering differences due to culture, neurodivergence, meditative practice, and so on. We might also look how various non-human animals introspect (if they do) and ask whether and how current AI systems introspect. Finally, we might consider merely possible cases, imagining the forms introspection might take in beings such as aliens and future AIs, which have radically different forms of mentality from our own and different introspective needs.

The theory route, by contrast, involves looking at different theoretical models of introspection and of the mental states that introspection targets. By varying the parameters in these models, we should then be able to identify new introspective possibilities.

In both forms of exploration, the aim is to identify interesting possible forms of introspection — that is, ones that allow for efficient and flexible control of behaviour but are nevertheless different from the familiar human form. All this should give us insight into possible interesting ways in which a mind can introspect.

The special issue also includes fifteen contributions by philosophers and cognitive scientists, each responding in some way to our proposal.

Some contributors make direct comments on, or criticisms of, our research programme (Peter Carruthers & Christopher Masciari, Maja Spener, Daniel Stoljar). Others (Krzysztof Dołęga, Adriana Renero, Wayne Wu) discuss particular models or theories of human introspection in the context of our programme, testing and evaluating the conceptual tools we offer.

Most contributors, however, focus on some particular aspect of our research question. One looks at introspective variation among humans (Stephen Fleming). Others focus on introspection in neurodivergent individuals (Alexandre Billon) and in meditators as conceived in the Buddhist tradition (Bryce Huebner & Sonam Kachru). 

At least three pieces look at introspection in nonhuman animals (Heather Browning & Walter Veit, Maisy Englund & Michael Beran, Jennifer Mather & Michaella Andrade). One piece is devoted to introspection in current AI systems, asking whether Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, could introspect (Robert Long), and AI introspection is also touched upon in other pieces (Heather Browning & Walter Veit, Krzysztof Dołęga, Stephen Fleming).

Finally, two contributions take a radically speculative perspective. They discuss introspection in imaginary minds very different from ours. One focuses on technologically enhanced humans (Pete Mandik). Another analyzes ‘ancillary’ artificial minds, which are intermediate between singular unified minds and group minds (Eric Schwitzgebel & Sophie Nelson).

This exciting multidisciplinary symposium is followed by a lengthy response paper in which we address the contributors’ arguments and proposals and draw some lessons for our project.

We hope that this special issue succeeds in making the case for the value of research on possible ways in which cognitive systems can introspect and that other researchers will pursue this research — ideally in unexpected directions!