Psychedelics, subjectivity, and self-awareness

Ego-dissolution experiences are perhaps the most philosophically germane effect of psychedelic drugs. Psychedelic ego-dissolution self-reports, in varying expressions, often claim completely selfless episodes. Some have called the experiences referred to in these reports ‘total ego dissolution,’ arguing that they lack all self-awareness while being phenomenally conscious. I identify two recent strategies to make such arguments. One targets Zahavi’s well-known view on minimal self-awareness, which claims that self-awareness is constitutively necessary for phenomenal consciousness. It maintains that minimal self-awareness is indeed shown to be lost from some psychedelic reports. The other strategy denies Zahavi-style minimal self-awareness as a legitimate kind of self-awareness but insists that psychedelic reports show complete lack of self-awareness nonetheless. Both strategies rely on psychedelic reports. Without offering a positive account of ego-dissolution, I argue that psychedelic reports are ambiguous and therefore unreliable to support such arguments. Due to alternative, equally plausible interpretations, they do not clearly evidence total ego dissolution or lack of all self-awareness. Since we are not certain on what exact shifts in self-experience psychedelic drugs can cause and given that the reports – as I argue – do not help us conclude, I propose a terminological shift that is appropriately neutral. I suggest we approach this issue cautiously and call these kinds of experiences ‘psychedelic self-disruptions’.