Several authors have recently suggested that classic psychedelics might be safe and effective agents of moral enhancement. This raises the question: can we learn anything interesting about the nature of moral experience from a close examination of transformative psychedelic experiences? The interdisciplinary enterprise of philosophical psychopathology attempts to learn about the structure and function of the “ordinary” mind by studying the radically altered mind. By analogy, in this chapter we argue that we can gain knowledge about the everyday moral life (...) by studying extraordinary experiences of altered moral cognition and experience. We focus on a specific class of cases: experiences of forgiveness induced by psychedelics. We argue that close attention to such experiences reveals the importance of thought/emotion coherence and dissonance in the moral life and vindicates some heterodox ideas about moral phenomenology and psychology. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the metaphorical use of medical terms in philosophy. Three examples selected from distinct philosophical contexts demonstrate that such terms have been employed as metaphors both to describe the practice of philosophising and historically to diagnose philosophical positions. The selected examples are (i) the title of Avicenna’s main philosophical work, The Book of Healing, (ii) the criticism of medical metaphors in Enlightenment philosophy, and (iii) recent historical diagnoses in philosophy. The underlying epistemological assumptions of all three contexts (...) are reconstructed to critically analyse the medical metaphors. Through this tripartite synopsis, I arrive at a normative conclusions medical metaphors, such as the “healing of the soul” or “pathology of reason”, do not stand up to the critique of Enlightenment and are obsolete against the theoretical background of my reference texts. (shrink)

This article will consider how and why a pragmatist way of thinking is inferred in the Buddhist ethical discourse of curing the sick. This medical analogy, where the Buddha as a medical doctor acts upon the sick, contains a profound implication that the sick need not understand the reason for their sickness, insofar as they are cured or enlightened. What is taken to be pragmatism is critically clarified in this Buddhist context. There being a dissimilarity in terms of the respective (...) ends (ultimate nirvāṇa vs. end as a means to further ends), the two types of moral discourse—Buddhist ethics and American pragmatism—have a common ground. That is, the human is receptive to the utility of a moral end, in which truth works regardless of one’s understanding of its absolute, abstruse reason. (shrink)

Many philosopers and social theorists pursue the notion that recognition is a fruitful framework for engaging with a social analysis of moral and political life, and – more critically – that the failure of recognition is a feature of alienation. This article argues that the thrust of these arguments can be properly attuned by deploying a dual model of recognition that draws especially on Sartre’s work. Where there is struggle for recognition between subjects, the object of struggle is not the (...) recognition of identity, or even of difference, but the recognition of non-identity. The claim will be that this practical attitude of recognition designates inter-subjective attitudes that can institute normative practices whereby agents’ claims are motivated by the epistemic virtue of non-identity. (shrink)