Philosophical Psychology:1-25 (forthcoming)
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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 to 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 way to catalyze the development of environmental virtues – 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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Keywords | psychedelics environmental virtues moral enhancement virtue ethics environmental ethics psilocybin |
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DOI | 10.1080/09515089.2022.2057290 |
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References found in this work BETA
Getting Moral Enhancement Right: The Desirability of Moral Bioenhancement.Ingmar Persson & Julian Savulescu - 2013 - Bioethics 27 (3):124-131.
Self Unbound: Ego Dissolution in Psychedelic Experience.Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans - 2017 - Neuroscience of Consciousness 3:1-11.
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