Kähönen Juuso
Department of Philosophy, History, and Art, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 14;14:1104627. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1104627. eCollection 2023.
Psychedelic experiences have been shown to both facilitate (re)connection to one's values and change values, including enhancing aesthetic appreciation, promoting pro-environmental attitudes, and encouraging prosocial behavior. This article presents an empirically informed framework of philosophical psychology to understand how self-transcendence relates to psychedelic value changes. Most of the observed psychedelic value changes are toward the self-transcendent values of Schwartz's value theory. As psychedelics also reliably cause various self-transcendent experiences (STEs), a parsimonious hypothesis is that STEs change values toward self-transcendent values. I argue that STEs indeed can lead to value changes, and discuss the morally relevant process of self-transcendence through Iris Murdoch's concept of "unselfing". I argue that overt egocentric concerns easily bias one's valuations. Unselfing reduces egocentric attributions of salience and enhances non-egocentric attention to the world, widening one's perspective and shifting evaluation toward self-transcendent modes. Values are inherently tied to various evaluative contexts, and unselfing can attune the individual to evaluative contexts and accompanying values beyond the self. Understood this way, psychedelics can provide temporarily enhanced access to self-transcendent values and function as sources of aspiration and value change. However, contextual factors can complicate whether STEs lead to long-term changes in values. The framework is supported by various research strands establishing empirical and conceptual connections between long-term differences in egocentricity, STEs, and self-transcendent values. Furthermore, the link between unselfing and value changes is supported by phenomenological and theoretical analysis of psychedelic experiences, as well as empirical findings on their long-term effects. This article furthers understanding of psychedelic value changes and contributes to discussions on whether value changes are justified, whether they result from cultural context, and whether psychedelics could function as tools of moral neuroenhancement.
迷幻体验已被证明既能促进与个人价值观的(重新)连接,也能改变价值观,包括增强审美欣赏、促进亲环境态度以及鼓励亲社会行为。本文提出了一个基于实证的哲学心理学框架,以理解自我超越与迷幻药引发的价值观变化之间的关系。观察到的大多数迷幻药引发的价值观变化都朝着施瓦茨价值理论中的自我超越价值观方向发展。由于迷幻药也能可靠地引发各种自我超越体验(STE),一个简洁的假设是,自我超越体验会使价值观朝着自我超越价值观转变。我认为自我超越体验确实会导致价值观的变化,并通过艾丽斯·默多克的“无我”概念来讨论自我超越在道德层面的相关过程。我认为明显的以自我为中心的关注点很容易使一个人的评价产生偏差。“无我”减少了以自我为中心的显著归因,并增强了对世界的非自我中心关注,拓宽了一个人的视野,并将评价转向自我超越模式。价值观本质上与各种评价背景相关联,而“无我”可以使个体适应超越自我的评价背景及相应价值观。从这个角度理解,迷幻药可以暂时增强对自我超越价值观的获取,并作为抱负和价值观变化的来源发挥作用。然而,背景因素会使自我超越体验是否会导致价值观的长期变化变得复杂。该框架得到了各种研究线索的支持,这些研究线索在以自我为中心、自我超越体验和自我超越价值观的长期差异之间建立了实证和概念上的联系。此外,“无我”与价值观变化之间的联系得到了对迷幻体验的现象学和理论分析,以及关于其长期影响的实证研究结果的支持。本文进一步加深了对迷幻药引发的价值观变化的理解,并有助于讨论价值观变化是否合理、它们是否源于文化背景,以及迷幻药是否可以作为道德神经增强的工具。