As interest in psychedelics like psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA revives and their legal status changes in many places, ethical guidelines are urgently needed for both medical and non-medical use. This paper argues that focusing only on medical applications neglects potentially valuable uses in other contexts and raises ethical issues including hype, exceptionalism, informed consent, therapeutic touch, data collection, and balancing access with safety. The authors call for renewed attention to the treatment-versus-enhancement distinction from bioethics and stress that guidelines should be flexible and context-sensitive. They recommend incorporating diverse stakeholder perspectives and cross-sector collaboration in future research and policy for psychedelic bioethics.
The paper argues that integrating literary studies into consciousness research can add an ethical and existential dimension often missing from empirical work. It contends that fictional narratives, particularly those rejecting essentialist ideas of self and agency, can help normalize reductionist scientific explanations of consciousness by presenting them in emotionally and experientially accessible forms. Using Virginia Woolf's The Waves as an example, the author shows how the novel's non-anthropocentric and non-essentialist portrayal of selfhood overlaps with materialist theories in neuroscience and philosophy, but frames them in poetic terms that highlight their emancipatory potential, allowing readers to relate to these ideas on a personal level.