Psychedelics and environmental virtues

Summary

To address critical environmental challenges, individual behavior must change alongside collective action. The administration of classic psychedelic drugs in controlled settings can enhance moral character by fostering feelings of unity and connectedness, which may increase nature-relatedness and pro-environmental behaviors. This approach aims to cultivate the environmental virtue of 'living in place,' encompassing respect for nature, humility, and aesthetic wonder. This proposal contributes to discussions on both environmental virtues and the moral enhancement potential of psychedelics.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The urgent need for solutions to critical environmental challenges is well attested, but often environmental problems are understood as fundamentally collective action problems. However, to solve these problems, there is also a need to change individual behavior. Hence, there is a pressing need to inculcate in individuals the environmental virtues – virtues of character that relate to our environmental place in the world. We propose a way of meeting this need, by the judicious, safe, and controlled administration of “classic” psychedelic drugs as a form of moral bio-enhancement. Recent evidence shows that psychedelics can be given safely in controlled environments, and can induce vivid experiences of unity and connectedness. These experiences, in turn, can durably increase feelings of nature-relatedness and pro-environmental behaviors. Therefore, we argue that responsible psychedelic use can reliably catalyze the development of a key environmental virtue known as living in place. This is a “master environmental virtue” that subsumes the qualities of respect for nature, proper humility, and aesthetic wonder and awe. Our account advances the environmental virtues debate by introducing a relevant practical proposal, and advances the psychedelic moral enhancement debate by providing a much-needed conceptual framework.

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