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  1. Philosophy of Psychedelics.Chris Letheby - 2021 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by "mystical" experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about (...)
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  2. Self unbound: ego dissolution in psychedelic experience.Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans - 2017 - Neuroscience of Consciousness 3:1-11.
    Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ‘I’ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ‘ego dissolution’ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which representations are bound. (...)
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  3. Psychedelics and environmental virtues.Nin Kirkham & Chris Letheby - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology 1:1-25.
    The urgent need for solutions to critical environmental challenges is well attested, but often environmental problems are understood as fundamentally collective action problems. However, to solve to these problems, there is also a need to change individual behavior. Hence, there is a pressing need to inculcate in individuals the environmental virtues — virtues of character that relate to our environmental place in the world. We propose a way of meeting this need, by the judicious, safe, and controlled administration of “classic” (...)
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  4. Psychedelics and Meditation: A Neurophilosophical Perspective.Chris Letheby - 2022 - In Rick Repetti (ed.), Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 209-223.
    Psychedelic ingestion and meditative practice are both ancient methods for altering consciousness that became widely known in Western society in the second half of the 20th century. Do the similarities begin and end there, or do these methods – as many have claimed over the years – share some deeper common elements? In this chapter I take a neurophilosophical approach to this question and argue that there are, indeed, deeper commonalities. Recent empirical studies show that psychedelics and meditation modulate overlapping (...)
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  5. Naturalistic Entheogenics.Chris Letheby - 2022 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3.
    In this précis I summarise the main ideas of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics. The book discusses philosophical issues arising from the therapeutic use of “classic” psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. The book is organised around what I call the Comforting Delusion Objection to psychedelic therapy: the concern that this novel and promising treatment relies essentially on the induction of non-naturalistic metaphysical beliefs, rendering it epistemically objectionable. I begin the précis by summarizing material from chapters two and three (...)
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  6. Psychedelic therapy for body dysmorphic disorder.Shevaugn Johnson & Chris Letheby - 2022 - Journal of Psychedelic Studies 6 (1):23-30.
    In this opinion piece we propose the investigation of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). BDD is a psychiatric disorder characterised by appearance-based preoccupations and accompanying compulsions. While safe and effective treatments for BDD exist, non-response and relapse rates remain high. Therefore, there is a need to investigate promising new treatment options for this highly debilitating condition. Preliminary evidence suggests safety, feasibility, and potential efficacy of psychedelic treatments in disorders that share similar psychopathological mechanisms with BDD. (...)
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  7. The Varieties of Psychedelic Epistemology.Chris Letheby - 2019 - In Nikki Wyrd, David Luke, Aimee Tollan, Cameron Adams & David King (eds.), Psychedelicacies: more food for thought from Breaking Convention. Strange Attractor Press.
    Recent scientific research suggests that altered states of consciousness induced by classic psychedelic drugs can cause durable psychological benefits in both healthy and patient populations. The phenomenon of ‘psychedelic transformation’ has many philosophically provocative aspects, not least of which is the claim commonly made by psychedelic subjects that their transformation is centrally due to some kind of learning or knowledge gain. Can psychedelic experiences really be a source of knowledge? From the vantage point of philosophical materialism or naturalism, a negative (...)
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  8. (1 other version)Psychedelics and Moral Psychology: The Case of Forgiveness.Samir Chopra & Chris Letheby - 2024 - In Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry. Oxford University Press.
    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 (...)
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  9. Philosophy and classic psychedelics: A review of some emerging themes.Chris Letheby & Jaipreet Mattu - 2022 - Journal of Psychedelic Studies 5 (3):166-175.
    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 (...)
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