The Philosophy Department presents
The value of mystical experience Noa Latham University of Calgary
The Value of Mystical Experience
Mystical experiences have arisen across cultures and historical eras and have profoundly transformed the lives of many who’ve had them. This talk examines the personal and ethical value that has been imputed to them. I begin by describing an experience of mine and how it’s influenced my life and subsequent research on this topic. Then I turn to the accounts of mystical experience presented by William James and Walter Stace, and the questionnaires based on them that have been devised for the purpose of empirical enquiry. Next I discuss some empirical enquiries into the value of mystical experiences, beginning with Walter Pahnke’s seminal Good Friday Experiment in which mystical experiences were induced through psilocybin. I focus on the concern raised by Michael Pollan that all these benefits may arise from a comforting delusion due to the experience involving a probably false nonphysicalist metaphysical belief. I examine a 2021 study by Timmermann et al. that looks specifically at the role of metaphysical beliefs in psychedelic experience and shows that experiences involving a shift towards nonphysicalist beliefs are associated with increases in well-being. Based on my own experience, I offer a conjecture for how mystical experiences that don’t involve nonphysicalist beliefs might have value. And I end by suggesting how empirical data can be used to test such conjectures and to discover other ways mystical experiences could have benefits when they don’t involve nonphysicalist beliefs.
Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 4:20pm Student Center Greenhouse