Webinar June 2nd, 2022. Nicolas Langlitz & Juuso Kähönen: Psychedelic morals are more complicated than you think

Psychedelics do not cause their effects in isolation: they are always embedded in complex cultural and social contexts. In psychedelic research, relatively little attention has been given to moral, ethical and cultural aspects that might have a crucial influence by creating a matrix of expectations and ideas which guide attention and feed into the experience. Furthermore, worldviews and values do not only affect the experience: psychedelic experiences can also shift our conceptions of the world, self and values. These shifts raise intriguing and difficult philosophical and moral questions which cannot be answered by the methodology of questionnaires and brain-imaging studies.

From these starting points, anthropologist Nicolas Langlitz and PhD student Juuso Kähönen enter into dialogue in a Zoom webinar session on June 2nd, 6PM in a session organized by the Association for Psychedelic Education & Culture (Psykedeelisen sivistyksen liitto ry). The speakers will untangle the web of extra-pharmacological considerations that surrounds psychedelic experiences and psychedelic research. The role of cultural context, epistemic and worldview-related changes will be considered: why are psychedelic experiences sometimes described as diminishing the ego or assisting in pushing someone a bit too deep into conspiracy theory rabbit holes? Political dimensions, commercialization and medicalization of psychedelic experiences also interest us – for example, whether it is good if mystical experiences are embedded into profit-yielding medical systems as their main cultural avenue.

Webinar tickets (€9/€6) are available in our web store. The webinar is free of charge for members of Psykedeelisen sivistyksen liitto ry (Association for Psychedelic Association & Culture) who have paid their membership fee for 2022 – members will receive a registration link through email. Memberships are also available on our web store.

As a special treat, we also offer the webinar free of charge for members of the Finnish Association for Psychedelic Research (Psykedeelitutkimusyhdistys ry), a Finnish non-profit focused on scientific research on psychedelics. Members will receive an email on the webinar in the near future. The webinar is also free for members of our Danish partner Center for Psykedelisk Dannelse.

Nicolas Langlitz is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York. As an anthropologist of science, he studies the behavioral sciences, especially neuropsychopharmacology and primatology. He is the author of three books: Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists (Princeton University Press, 2020), Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain (University of California Press, 2012), and Die Zeit der Psychoanalyse: Lacan und das Problem der Sitzungsdauer (Suhrkamp, 2005). He is also the founder of the Psychedelic Humanities Lab at The New School.

Juuso Kähönen is a PhD student in the University of Helsinki. His doctoral research explores philosophical and normative questions and implications raised by techniques such as psychedelics and meditation – especially by changes in sense of self, values, and sense of connectedness these techniques can cause. What do they imply for our conceptions of selfhood, self-transcendence and flourishing life? Answering these questions might have implications for how we should, as a society, relate to altered states of consciousness, evaluate these techniques, and integrate them into our civilization in a wise way. Outside university, Juuso is a contemplative practitioner, and loves to dialogue and improvise, whether via dance, words or music.