EPISODE 17 - Chris Letheby
“There’s evidence that regular, ritual psychedelic use could help to prevent mental health problems, but our society lacks a way to think about this”
Chris Letheby
In today’s podcast, I spoke with Chris Letheby. Dr. Letheby is a philosopher working on issues related to the therapeutic and transformative potential of classic psychedelic drugs - check out his full bio below.
As an academic philosopher, Chris has epistemological and logical expertise, (as well as a keen understanding of both the philosophy of science and psychiatry), but his key areas of specialization lie in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
In today’s podcast We Discuss;
The relevance of philosophy to psychedelics, and his most recent book The Philosophy of Psychedelics,
The veracity of knowledge ‘acquired’ through psychedelic experiences and the four main branches of philosophy,
The foundational nature of truth and its relationship to thought experiment’s like Robert Nozigck’s experience machine,
The truth claims of the experiencing vs the remembering self and how they can compete,
The delineation of the normative question pertaining to absolute truth claims about the objective universe vs. the obvious psychological importance of truth in our daily lives,
postmodernist epistemological skepticism,
The current prepotency of idealism in the field of psychedelia,
The three varieties of knowledge Chris believes can be acquired through the psychedelic experience;
Knowledge ‘how’,
Knowledge ‘that’,
Knowledge ‘by acquaintance’,
Benni Shannon’s work on the epistemic of ayahuasca visions,
The potential temporal window of neuroplasticity after psychedelics and the conceptualizing of psychedelics as ‘relaxiomatics’,
The delineation of the definitions of the concepts of phenomenal consciousness, self-consciousness, and ‘the self’, and why it is important to distinguish these terms when discussing psychedelic phenomenology,
Book Recommendations:
Mortal Questions by Thomas Nagel,
History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel,
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan,
The Philosophy of Psychedelics by Chris Letheby.
Dr. Chris Letheby:
Philosopher
Dr Chris Letheby is a philosopher working on issues related to the therapeutic and transformative potential of classic psychedelic drugs. In his work Letheby argues that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism, the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is.
He is currently a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Australia and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Adelaide, working on the Australian government-funded project 'Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry'. His monograph Philosophy of Psychedelics was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press.