Question In an illegal drug such as LSD, the chemical reaction with your brain causes you to see things, such as motion trails or lighting effects, that cannot be seen by someone who is not on the drug. Assuming that is true, would it be possible that LSD gives its user the ability to see something that actually exists but cannot be seen by the human eye without the chemical adjustment of the drug in the brain?

Accepted:
October 18, 2005

Comments

I suppose it depends upon how you understand these effects. Take "motion trails". If we regard these as illusions--that is, we hold that there aren't really colored trails that follow a moving object like colored silk scarves attached to the end of the object--then the drug may be allowing us to have certain illusory experiences that we might not otherwise achieve, but it isn't allowing us to see colored trails that actually follow objects, since there are none. So LSD allows us to have an experience as of a motion trail, but not to actually see one in the world. (This is just what we should say about the straight pencil that looks crooked in a glass of water: I have a visual experience as of a crooked pencil, but am not actually seeing one, since there is none to be seen.) This is not to deny, though, that drugs may heighten our veridical perception of our environment. That to me is the most interesting feature of drugs. Perhaps LSD does this at times, but I wouldn't know.