Nowadays, it seems the title ‘philosopher’ is applied quite liberally. For instance, some fans of Jordan Peterson think he’s a philosopher (and even one of the greatest modern philosophers). This is despite the fact that he’s never claimed to be one, his training is as a psychologist, and he misunderstands and mischaracterises philosophers and philosophical…
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One of the characteristics of the psychedelic mystical experience is the noetic quality: the feeling of profound insight (this is the focus of Chapter 2 in my book Altered Perspectives). This type of insight is felt to be authoritative, that is, an incontrovertible revelation. However, insights that carry an authoritative truth can occur in non-mystical…
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The simulation hypothesis – the proposal that we live in a computer-generated reality – is a philosophical idea that many psychonauts embrace. While tripping, or post-trip, this hypothesis can seem a lot more likely to be true; in fact, it can appear undeniably true. On the subreddit r/SimulationTheory, psychedelic experiences are often discussed and viewed…
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In philosophy, the ‘non-identity problem’ refers to what our moral obligations to future individuals should be, that is, to those who do not yet exist. It is a problem in moral philosophy because, typically, the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action is evaluated in terms of how it affects someone (who exists). To summarise…
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In spiritual circles, a common metaphysical belief is that ‘the universe is love’, or something to that effect. Another way of phrasing this view is that the fundamental force in the universe is love, the universe is governed by love, or, as the Jesuit mystic Teilhard de Chardin opined, “The physical structure of the universe…
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