Commentary: Not in the drug, not in the brain: Causality in psychedelic experiences from an enactive perspective

Frontiers in Psychology 14 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

I welcome with great enthusiasm Meling and Scheidegger’s (2023; henceforth “M&S”) timely contribution to advance an enactive approach to psychedelic therapy, especially to the complex causality involved. Their two main research questions concerned:(i) the causal interaction between the psychedelic molecule and brain activity; and (ii) the causal interaction between brain activity and the psychedelic experience. While I largely agree with and celebrate much of what is proposed by M&S, especially their employment of key enactive concepts to advance our understanding of the first research question, in the following, I will present some worries regarding their answers to the second. Although I agree that there is probably a two-way reciprocal relationship between neural activity and experience, I have several points of contention regarding M&S’s proposal. My hope is to stimulate discussion on M&S’s important contribution, and to help advance a much-needed enactive science of psychedelics.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Serotonin, Predictive Processing and Psychedelics.Matteo Colombo - 2022 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3.
Seeing Snakes.G. T. Roche - 2010-09-24 - In Fritz Allhoff & Dale Jacquette (eds.), Cannabis Philosophy for Everyone. Wiley‐Blackwell. pp. 35–49.

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-01-10

Downloads
74 (#223,135)

6 months
74 (#64,514)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Ignacio Cea
Temuco Catholic University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references