Latest reading list

'On Altered Reality' –
Here's the preprint of my somewhat critical Commentary on an article by Borkel, et al. on using epistemological approaches to the detriment of Metaphysics in psychedelic therapy – forthcoming Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology:
philpapers.org/rec/SJSOAR

Consciousness Club –
Informal, friendly in-person reading group for discussing texts on consciousness from multidisciplinary perspectives, University of Exeter. Enrol:

Should the NHS really use magic mushrooms to treat mental health? Many clinical trials to test the use of psychedelic medicines for conditions such as depression have been underway since 2022 - with surprising results

‘Should the NHS really use magic mushrooms to treat mental health?’: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A frosty winter’s morning on campus at Exeter:

‘Visions of Pantheism’ by Prof. em. Brian Morris is now released free online, almost three decades after it was written:
philosopher.eu/visions-of-pantheism

The paper was originally presented as a talk to the Anthropology Society at SOAS in 1998, but never published.

With Brian’s permission now given, I will publish it online soon.

Popped over to Switzerland to give a class at ETH Zurich – enjoyed too the rain, snow, sights, history, and hospitality.🇨🇭

‘Being a philosopher, that is, hating “the lie in the soul” more than anything else…’
– Leo Strauss, 1941

Penzance this evening:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/materialis...

In this episode of the Mind-Body Solution Podcast, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes and Matthew Segall join Dr. Tevin Naidu to discuss the Mind-at-Large Project, a three-year, multidisciplinary initiative exploring consciousness and its role in reality

Watch now: youtu.be/QjX6lauhsAo

Pantheism: One and all Pantheism – All is God – is the hidden doctrine behind many reported psychedelic-occasioned experiences, both in the literature and in clinical trials, yet its meaning is little understood in the c...

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes offers a fresh outline of Pantheism via the exploration of its etymology and history, where Pantheism is the hidden doctrine behind many reported psychedelic-occasioned experiences doi.org/10.1080/0951... Open access #vol38issue7
12/14

Last weekend at Verdurin with J.F. Martel, Quentin S. Crisp, Jack Hunter, @petersjostedth.bsky.social, and Daniel Corrick, plus Amir Naaman.

University of Exeter has implement a four-tier AI policy. Most convenors seem to adopt the low-tier ‘AI-minimal’ for their classes meaning that AI is strictly only permitted for spelling and grammar. The pedagogical reasoning is given to students. Transgression can end in suspension.

‘[The] transition from “descriptive phenomenology” to “transcendental idealism” in no way constitutes a break in Husserl’s thought; it is but the logical explication of what was implicit in the earlier period.’
– Quentin Lauer, 1965

Grateful to have just received this unpublished 1998 paper, ‘Visions of Pantheism’ personally from Goldsmith’s Prof. Brian Morris (a close friend of my primary school headmaster!).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_M...

Autumnal tints, tones, shades, and shadings:

‘[The] very notion of “nature” is itself the product of subjectivity and hence the whole project of the naturalisation of subjectivity is completely mistaken.’
– Dermot Moran, 2012
Paraphrasing Husserl, Ideas II§64

Pantheism: One and all Pantheism – All is God – is the hidden doctrine behind many reported psychedelic-occasioned experiences, both in the literature and in clinical trials, yet its meaning is little understood in the c...

Open access: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Happy to hear that this article was the second most read article in the journal Philosophical Psychology for the last quarter, and the highest sole-authored article there. ‘Pantheism: One and All’

'Wittgenstein annoys me intensely. He is the complete example of the sayings:
I am Master of the College
What I know not, is not knowledge.'
– A. N. Whitehead
(Letter to Henry S. Leonard; Jan 10, 1936)

'I am accusing British analytic philosophy of having destroyed everything in what was rich within thought, and I accuse Wittgenstein of having assassinated Whitehead...'
– Deleuze
(10:3:1987)

How to fathom timelessness | Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

How to fathom timelessness:

On the varieties of time and atemporality:

spotify.link/nagaCDR0RXb

Gorges du Verdon

That one is not out yet, Borkel et al. It will be published along with my (and presumably others’) commentary soon.

Born on this day: Henri Bergson
'[The] relation between the "phenomenon" and the "thing" is not that of appearance to reality, but merely that of the part to the whole.'
– MM230

Exeter by night

At Humphry Davy’s Bristol workplace, the Pneumatic Institution

Exeter campus today

Drug Science statement on RCPsych document: www.drugscience.org.uk/royal-colleg...