Anyway, I wrote this a few years ago for an online philosophy forum. Nothing rigorous, just for fun. The "Other" thread reminded me of it. It's a little long. Thanks for reading.
The Philosophical Significance of Altered States of Consciousness.
What are altered states? What is their philosophical significance (if any)?
Thesis: An altered state is a structural change in subjectivity, a fundamental reorganization of consciousness such that habitual patterns of experience are interrupted, allowing the possibility of new organizations of consciousness by which the world and the self are related in entirely new ways. Consequently, alternate states of consciousness (including but not limited to the states induced by psychotropic plants) deserve serious consideration as experimental tools for examining the limits and nature of consciousness.
The term, “altered state” may suggest a specific, drug-related connotation. But this is only one sense of the term. There are many ways in which consciousness changes and various means by which to change it. It can be argued that these different kinds of alterations fall under general types; in other words, it is possible that subjective changes in consciousness induced by LSD, for example, are not significantly different in essence from changes in consciousness achieved through something as “harmless” as meditation. In fact, I have read accounts of people who have tried both methods (such as Ram Dass’s BE HERE NOW, or Andrew Weil’s THE NATURAL MIND), and they claim that the chemical is not a necessary requirement, but merely one sufficient tool for arriving at the same state. In addition, many people have had dreams in which they experience an LSD-type state. So clearly, the chemical is not necessary. The possibility of consciousness altering in this specific way is something that can be voluntarily triggered (meditation), involuntarily triggered (dreams), and “mechanically” induced (drugs). And this does not exhaust the possibilities; there is also sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, chanting/singing/dancing, fasting, etc., all of which induce altered states of consciousness that are typically associated with drug use.
The simple fact of the multiplicity of means by which to alter consciousness suggests that “standard” states of consciousness (whatever those are) are not necessarily more natural, normal, or necessary, but are instead contingent, conditioned, and evolutionary. In other words, since it is so easy to knock the brain out of its more typical states, the specific way in which we experience ourselves and reality is not the result of a priori, “hardwired” structures of the brain. Rather, we can conclude that what IS inherent in the brain’s structure is the capacity to adopt a multitude of ways to deal with and to sort information, bringing about a multitude of relations between consciousness and its objects. Indeed, it is implicit in my thesis that our “typical” states of consciousness are contingent products of our survival context (the physical environment with emphasis on those features significant to natural selection) and our social context. In other words, our “normal” states are not necessarily truer than alternate states. They are merely stable, useful states of consciousness in relation to propagating genes and memes in this particular terrestrial context. But given different survival and social contexts, perhaps different states are more appropriate.
For instance, an Euclidean spatial experience is the product of living in specific terrestrial environments that invite Euclidean interpretations. But in the weightless and omni-directional context of space (no “up” or “down,” no limiting horizon, etc.), Euclidean geometry becomes not only inappropriate, but even inaccurate in terms of interstellar travel. Non-Euclidean geometry is used by relativistic physics, which will be necessary for our future interstellar journeys.
However, since drug use is one of the most powerful ways to alter consciousness, the epistemological issue of hallucination enters here. If we understand that our specific, factual existence in the world is contingent, and we acknowledge the possibility of alternate experiential/existential relations to the world, then hallucination is nothing more than an inappropriate relation to an object in a specific ontic context (in Heidegger’s sense). Hallucination would not necessarily mean fake or unreal in any absolute sense, but in merely a contextual sense. This means that while different ontic interpretations may be inappropriate for a specific context (i.e., hallucination), they may be applicable to different, equally real ontic contexts (as with the Euclidean/non-Euclidean example above), and therefore not necessarily false.
Most drugs do not alter consciousness in ways that create “objects” objectively present in space. These “full-blown” hallucinations are rare. Most drug-induced altered states are characterized by qualitative changes in the experience of objects already there prior to the drug effects (what we call “real objects.”) But even if altered states are hallucinations in the sense that their objects have no references in the actual world, this doesn’t eliminate their usefulness as examples of actual ways in which it is possible to alter consciousness. This is important because it is in this way that they “outline” the general, structural features of consciousness, those structural lines of possibility along which consciousness may change, similar to eidetic structures described by Husserl in his work in phenomenology. In doing so, they reveal that which does not change, the general form of possibility along which the individual, actual values are changing.
For example, if in an altered state we become aware of the possibility of consciousness changing with respect to the apprehension of time, then temporality in general is revealed as a fundamental structural feature of consciousness, a general mode of different specific temporal relations. Since consciousness can adopt different types of temporal awareness – different temporal relations to the world -- these different types represent individual members of a general form of temporal consciousness. Our experience of time may be daily, yearly, seasonal, cyclical, linear, etc. But (as Kant realized without the help of drugs), temporality is an inescapable structural feature of consciousness. This is one example that is obvious to us all as philosophers, but it is where consciousness changes unexpectedly that our greatest insights into general structures occur.
The above briefly outlines the significance of altered states, one of my two opening questions. The other opening question dealt with the nature of altered states. What alters, exactly? What changes? I’ve mentioned the experience of time and space. Other changing features of subjective experience include altered experience of the self in relation to the world, a change in the ego. Ego-relatedness can be transcended and recognized as a pure social construction, an “objective projection” of your self into culture, language, and the world. It is you understood in terms of “the-they,” as Heidegger might have put it. But the regard of intentionality can be directed upon the act of consciousness itself, “bracketing” the world and identifying instead with that consciousness. Then, as the social ego is discarded, Being can be experienced more generally, prior to filtering it through that particular social context. This experiential change is something reported by many users of psychedelics.
So in addition to temporality and spatiality, we also experience reality in terms of varying degrees of ego-relatedness. There are other existential structures of consciousness that can be manipulated with drugs.
Do these insights sound familiar? Kant? Eastern mysticism? Phenomenology? Yes, exactly. But if we can reach these realizations without the use of drugs to achieve altered states, then why do we need altered states to gain these insights?
The answer has been before you all along: there is a multiplicity of ways to induce these altered states of consciousness. Philosophy is just another one (especially phenomenology). So this brings us to a fuller account of what an altered state is. I think, in terms of the history of philosophy, drug-induced altered states gain both their significance and their definition as being spontaneous phenomenological intuitions into the existential, ontological structures in which consciousness has its Being. They are existential realizations that previously required either decades of meditation, or rigorous philosophical investigation.
Many philosophers have agreed that phenomenology is difficult to jump into, requiring not just a new technical jargon or examining a new conceptual model. Instead, phenomenology presented an entirely new way to do philosophy, a new technique or method other than traditional conceptual analysis. It is an existential investigation requiring one to practice manipulating your intentionality, turning one’s intentional regard to eidetic features of consciousness and the necessary, constituent existential structures in which consciousness has its being. Writers of phenomenology (such as Richard M. Zaner, author of THE WAY OF PHENOMENOLOGY) have said that there are many ways to get into the phenomenological “attitude,” many ways to readjust your focus. Heidegger and Husserl followed different philosophical paths to phenomenological insights. Zaner compares them to explorers investigating a new continent, each taking a different way and making a different map. The “continent” is a like a new territory in Being. But this territory is not really new, it is just newly seen. It is the foundation to our existence, the existential structure of our Being. I believe that altered states have the potential to take you to similar phenomenological territory, and they do it in ways that follow the same general path as philosophical approaches to this territory: radical readjustments of the focus of intentionality and the “bracketing” of traditional interpretations of and relations to the world.
This is my justification for advocating the study of drug-induced altered states, and the legalization necessary to do so. It is not just recreation or hallucination. In the hands of trained consciousness explorers, it could facilitate our understanding of consciousness and reality.
danlo. I'm up for it. 
