The paper distinguishes two views of psychedelics: the drug-centered view (DCP) and the drug-assisted view (DAP). Both rely on evidence-based medicine and randomized controlled trials to validate therapeutic efficacy. Using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy as a case study, the authors reconstruct the causal reasoning behind its proposed effects, identify two key causal assumptions, and critically examine them. They argue that DAP's reliance on evidence-based medicine is not just methodological but also reflects questionable epistemological assumptions inherited from the empirically supported therapy tradition. The paper proposes value-based practice as a complementary methodology better suited to the relational and value-laden aspects of DAP.
Conceivability arguments, which try to show that physicalism is false because we can conceive of a world physically identical to ours but without consciousness, fail if properties are understood as causal powers. By examining three distinct ways of understanding causal powers and their associated modality, the author argues that most physicalist powers theorists need not worry: the conclusion that physicalism is false does not hold in their ontology. The paper also defends specific powers theories against recent objections, contending that conceiving properties as powerful blocks such arguments unless an implausible form of emergence is true.
The experience of motion and change has a 'flow-like' quality, often called temporal qualia. Some philosophers argue that time must objectively pass for us to have this experience, while others concede that time appears to pass but falsely. This paper rejects both views, arguing that the concept of 'passage' does not help explain temporal qualia and instead confuses the issue. It offers a reductionist account of temporal qualia that avoids any reference to passage, drawing support from empirical studies of motion perception.