Topics Mind

Question Are there good philosophical reasons for taking drugs? Michel Foucault, Aldous Huxley and Sam Harris are examples of people who have experimented with drugs for creative purposes and in order to gain insight. Given that one is destined to live their entire life in sobriety (which is just one state of consciousness), do they have an inherent right to experience other consciousnesses which completely alter their understanding of reality? In this sense, can people who have not taken drugs but criticize them, be considered ignorant in that they have no experience of drugs?

Accepted:
June 14, 2010

Comments

Yes, I agree with you. There are good philosophical reasons for experimenting with mind altering drugs, the same reasons that make it desirable to experience travel, different kinds of people, different cuisines, different art, etc. Now, of course, the benefits of mind-altering drugs must be balanced against the harms they can produce, and those harms are real enough, although, arguably suffering of various kinds is also something that can provide one opportunities philosophical insight. But just as one is not obligated to suffer or experiment with different cuisines, one is not obligated to experiment with mind-altering drugs. Those who do not experiment will be in some sense ignorant, but it's not clear that philosophically speaking theirs will always or often be a pernicious or limiting ignorance, no more so than the ignorance of one who has not traveled to Peru or experienced the pain of cancer. Moreover, the ignorance will not be complete, for many philosophical purposes one can gain relevant information about the effects of mind-altering drugs from scientific, journalistic, and autobiographical literature. Nevertheless, benefits are possible and well established by the testimony of those who have experimented.