Is a rational & evidence-based enculturation of the psychedelic experience possible? | T Metzinger

Prof. Dr. Thomas Metzinger | Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz -------------------- We are a non-profit organisation - but you can support our work with a donation! With your tax-deductible donation we can achieve our goals and visions. Every euro or dollar you donate will fund a project or researcher who is committed to safe and legal therapies, harm reduction and the development of the European health system. Please indicate “Metzinger Video“ as the intended purpose. Link: ---------------------- In this short talk, I will first explain the concept of a “consciousness culture” and then give some brief examples of why psychedelic experiences are interesting if viewed from the perspective of philosophy of mind, applied ethics, and cognitive science. I will argue that it would be a mistake to simply legalize the classical hallucinogens, but that the real challenge lies fostering a very careful, ethically motivated and scientifically grounded process of “enculturation”: A process of creating a new cultural context in which all members of society can profit from the intrinsic value of these psychoactive substances, while at the same time minimizing risks and cultivating a rational, evidence-based strategy for harm-reduction. How do we integrate science, individual experience, and social praxis? Are there philosophical virtues that can help us to create a new debate culture? How can we deal with prejudices, irrational positions, and the complacency of those “who simply know better” in a productive way? In order to initiate a more systematic discussion I will once again present some first building blocks for an Enculturation Protocol. -------------------- Thomas Metzinger (*1958 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is currently Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Study (FIAS). He is also Director of the Neuroethics Research Unit in Mainz and Director of the MIND Group at the FIAS. Metzinger is past president of the German Cognitive Science Society (2005-2007) and of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (2009-2011). His focus of research lies in analytical philosophy of mind and cognitive science, as well as in connections between ethics, philosophy of mind and anthropology; he received several awards and Fellowships (see below), the last one being a 5-year GRC Fellowship by the Gutenberg Research College (2014-2019). In the English language, he has edited two collections on consciousness (“Conscious Experience”, Paderborn: mentis & Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic, 1995; “Neural Correlates of Consciousness”, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000) and published one major scientific monograph developing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary theory about consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective (“Being No One – The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity”, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). In 2009, he published a popular book, which addresses a wider audience and discusses the ethical, cultural and social consequences of consciousness research (“The Ego Tunnel – The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self”, New York: Basic Books). A revised and greatly expanded German edition has appeared in 2014, which is now also translated in other languages like Russian, Chinese, Polish, Spanish etc. An important recent Open Access collection (2015) is Open MIND at , see also (2017) for a follow-up.