Psychedelic Humanities

Our projects

At present, the common denominator of our projects is an interest in the moral dimension of the psychedelic experience, research, and therapy. One possible framework for these investigations has been sketched in Langlitz et al. (2021), “Moral Psychopharmacology Needs Moral Inquiry: The Case of Psychedelics.”

  • Psychedelics and moral values: In this mixed-method study, we are looking at correlations between moral values and the use of different types of psychedelics. 
  • Political Psychopharmacology: In a changing moral and political landscape, this project examines the social effects of psychedelic drugs. It explores new approaches to understanding how the interplay of neuropsychopharmacology and sociocultural settings can make the psychotropic effects of psychedelics morally and politically transformative.

Other related projects

Read the full review of Chris Letheby’s Philosophy of Psychedelics (Oxford University Press, 2021) by Nicolas Langlitz on The Polyphony:

…Letheby’s book uses the tools of neurophilosophy to theorize the transformative potential of psychedelics, which psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy harnesses for clinical purposes. Although I have been following the neuropsychopharmacological literature on this class of drugs for two decades now, the way Letheby synthesizes it with the most recent philosophy of mind offered more than one eureka to me. Part of me read the book for its insights into the nature of the psychedelic experience. But I also read Philosophy of Psychedelics as an anthropologist of knowledge cultures who observes how other observers observe the world and who has conducted ethnographic work on neurophilosophy before (Langlitz 2015a, 2015b). Hence, my review will render the epistemic medium of Letheby’s observations “opaque,” to use his terminology. Instead of looking through his transparent lens at the object of study to assess whether his claims about psychedelics are true or false, I will focus on the neurophilosophical lens enabling these truth claims in the first place. The question behind my reading is how Letheby situates philosophy in the revival of psychedelic research. What role is it coming to play in a field that has been dominated by biomedical sciences…? (read more)

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