Neuropsychedelics is contextual
Neuroaesthetics studies the cognitive processes and functional networks of brain regions involved in aesthetic experiences. Various criticisms have been made that it cannot capture the complexity and richness of aesthetic experiences, and neuroscience may not even be relevant. How might neuropsychedelics respond to similar criticisms?
Avoiding reductionism
In one study, LSD significantly increased the meaningfulness ratings for music that was previously experienced as not personally meaningful- an effect that was normalised by pretreatment with ketanserin (a 5-HT2A receptor antagonist that blocked the effects of LSD). It could be tempting to reduce such an attribution as ‘just a drug experience’. However, this explains nothing about its meaningfulness and how the phenomenology induced by the LSD is interpreted. The same reductionism can be applied to the meaningfulness of all normal waking states- in some sense, they are ‘just a chemical experience’ in the brain.
Focusing only on when the LSD takes effect ignores the contextual factors that frame psychedelic experiences and provide the values that interpret and give meaning to them, including the hours and days after the most intense effects wear off when the Narrative Self and Social Self make sense of the experience in the light of intentions set before its onset.
More research is needed to understand the effects of specific contextual factors on psychedelic experiences and people’s expectations about them (perhaps informed by research on placebos).
The relevance of neuroscience
Neuroscience may not be explanatorily relevant unless it can provide ‘constitutive claims’ that the activity of certain brain regions in some way constitutes psychedelic experiences or ‘evidential claims’ that activity of certain brain regions correlates with them.
Constitutive claims
Psychedelic experiences demonstrate how perception is generative where our brains make best guess predictions to infer the causes of sense data based on the background context of our prior beliefs. knowledge and expectations. Unlike normal perceptions that are ‘controlled hallucinations’, psychedelic experiences are ‘uncontrolled perceptions’ since the normal corrective mechanisms are not functioning properly.
Evidential claims
Psychedelics are useful to ‘switch on’ altered states of consciousness with a high degree of experimental control to study their neural correlates and establish a nomological framework for them (which is currently lacking). The neural correlates of a mature ego include the significant coupling within the Default Mode Network, and between it and the Medial Temporal Lobes.
While some research findings may be quite general, researchers have proposed to test more specific claims by experimenting with microdosing so that participants can remain cognitively capable to carry out certain tasks. This need not be limited to cognitive tasks. Experiences of different artworks while microdosed could also be studied, as well as the factors affecting whether microdosing makes participants more likely to adopt an aesthetic attitude towards other types of objects, images or sounds.
Illuminating confusions about subjectivity
These neuroscientific claims link to the ‘easy problem’ of consciousness but leave the ‘hard problem’ untouched.
The real problem of consciousness
Our intuitions behind the hard problem could be based on confusions that arise because the easy problem misses the point. It focuses on neural correlates that explain the behavioural and functional properties of consciousness rather than its phenomenological properties. Yet phenomenology is the essence of conscious experience. Perhaps research on psychedelic phenomenology could provide testable predictions to explain why certain aspects of perception cause certain conscious experiences?
The meta-problem of consciousness
Since psychedelics can alter people’s metaphysical beliefs about consciousness, they could contribute to empirical research on the ‘meta-problem of consciousness’- the behavioural, psychological and sociological reasons for our intuition behind the hard problem.
One study found that a single psychedelic experience increased the attribution of Conscious Level to a range of living organisms and non-living objects, the magnitude of which directly related to the mystical intensity of the experience. Another study found that the ceremonial use of psychedelics can lead to significant shifts away from materialist views and towards panpsychism; people, who held more moderate views on panpsychism, became more convinced of this view.
How do contextual factors affect how people interpret their psychedelic experiences based on the values they associate with the subjective nature of conscious experience?