APPLIED MYSTICISM: A DRUG‐ENABLED VISIONARY EXPERIENCE AGAINST MORAL BLINDNESS

Intellectuals such as William James and Aldous Huxley have thought it possible to develop a technique to apply to this world the mystical‐type insights gained during drug‐enabled experiences. Particularly, Huxley claimed that the visionary experience triggered by psychedelics could help us rethink our relationship with technology and promote a much‐needed cultural change. In this article, we explore this hypothesis. To do so, we build a philosophical framework based on Günther Anders's philosophy of technique, presenting human beings as morally blind when facing technological development. Mystical experiences are then proposed as a means to improve our moral faculties—and psychedelic drugs as tools to enable them. We finally explore the empirical feasibility of such a hypothesis by thoroughly reviewing the recent scientific literature on the nature of the psychedelic experience, concluding that the long‐term effects in the personality domain openness and in nature relatedness point to the emergence of a morally improved agent, thus providing substance to an application of mysticism.     

SEMANTIC BLINDNESS:

Abstract— This study demonstrates a recently predicted cognitive phenomenon known as semantic blindness, an inhibitory effect attributable to concept repetition in the serial recall of rapidly presented sentences Proficient bilinguals read mixed, Spanish-English sentences each including a target and a pretarget word Targets and pretargets were related in three ways They were identical(e g, like-like), semantically identical across languages (e g, gusta-like), and noridentical within or across languages (e g, read-like) Equivalent repetition blindness was found for targets with identical and semantically identical pretargets, indicating that repetition deficits were occurring solely at the semantic level, rather than at orthographic or phonological levels     

MORAL CONTEXTUALISM AND MORAL RELATIVISM

Moral relativism provides a compelling explanation of linguistic data involving ordinary moral expressions like 'right' and 'wrong'. But it is a very radical view. Because relativism relativizes sentence truth to contexts of assessment it forces us to revise standard linguistic theory. If, however, no competing theory explains all of the evidence, perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift. However, I argue that a version of moral contextualism can account for the same data as relativism without relativizing sentence truth to contexts of assessment. This version of moral contextualism is thus preferable to relativism on methodological grounds.     

MORAL REFORM,MORAL DISAGREEMENT,AND ABORTION

Abstract: Bernard Gert argues that legitimate moral disagreement calls for tolerance and moral humility; when there is more than one morally acceptable course of action, then intolerance and what Gert calls “moral arrogance” would be objectionable. This article identifies some possible difficulties in distinguishing moral arrogance from moral reform and then examines Gert's treatment of abortion as a contemporary example of moral disagreement that he characterizes as irresolvable.     

MORAL INERTIA

Abstract. The phenomenon of moral inertia is often explained by reference to all-encompassing features of human nature, such as laziness and cowardice, but in fact it has many causes. A modern person may fail to "stand up" to social evil because he has difficulty seeing it-perhaps because it is deliberately hidden or because she and her neighbors cannot find ways to recognize and discuss it as a soluble problem. Fourteen factors contributing to moral inertia will be listed here under the headings of cognitive and linguistic factors. Further, a consideration of ideology's role (both liberal and Marxist) in inhibiting action against social evil will be presented.