Psychedelics and Philosophy: Metaphysics and Meaning-Making in Psychedelia

Harvard Divinity School

Philosophers Prof. Christine Hauskeller and Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes presented a multi-perspectival hermeneutics of psychedelic-occasioned experiences. They discussed the question: How do we make sense of the myriad of experiences and extraordinary states of being that psychedelics can evoke through lenses ground from the discipline of Philosophy? Sjöstedt-Hughes introduced his Metaphysics Matrix as a framework through which to interpret certain psychedelic experiences—covering systems such as physicalism, idealism, dualism, and neutral monism, panpsychism, and cosmopsychism—a “menu” that opens possibilities of interpretation beyond the restricted options imposed by implicit inculcation. Prof. Hauskeller drew upon Critical Theory and on feminist ethics to question the framing of experience as mystical and consider decolonial ways of meaning making. This event took place November 6, 2023. A full transcript is forthcoming. Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/