Psychedelic Space

Summary

The chapter presents a new understanding of psychedelic experiences as varying in intensity and nature. It identifies four dimensions—scope, clarity, novelty, and duration—that determine how psychedelic an experience can be. Clarity is emphasized as crucial for distinguishing between experiences that truly reveal the mind and those that distort it, suggesting a more complex view where experiences can be both revealing and distorting simultaneously.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides a novel explication of the concept of psychedelic experience, understood as a mind-revealing experience. After reviewing the history of the concept of psychedelic experience, the chapter argues that experiences can be psychedelic in varying degrees and in different ways. In particular, the chapter argues that experiences can be more or less psychedelic by varying with respect to four dimensions: (i) scope, (ii) clarity, (iii) novelty, and (iv) duration. These four dimensions form the conceptual framework of psychedelic space, and they can be used to distinguish different ways that experiences may be more or less psychedelic. Special attention is paid to the dimension of clarity, as it allows us to differentiate between experiences that accurately reveal the mind and those that do not. This, in turn, allows for a more nuanced approach to psychedelic experiences, allowing them to be simultaneously mind-revealing in some respects and mind-distorting in others.