David is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. He completed his Doctoral training in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where he conducted research using psychometrics, computational linguistic analysis, virtual reality, and non-invasive brain stimulation. His research focus is on the psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopharmacology of spiritual, self-transcendent, and positively transformative experiences triggered with psychedelic substances and through other means. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how these experiences can result in long-term changes to well-being and how they temporarily alter fundamental faculties of consciousness, such as the sense of time, space, and self. He is the author of a forthcoming book called The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences: Twenty-First Century Research and Perspectives.
Colloquium Presentation: 02 December 2022 (Online)
Understanding, Quantifying, and Addressing Belief Change in the Context of Psychedelic Treatments.
Abstract
Psychedelic experiences in clinical settings can involve attributions related to various metaphysical belief systems and can sometimes result in changes to one’s personal belief system. How prevalent are metaphysical belief changes from psychedelic experiences and how they should be handled in clinical settings? I review recent clinical and cross-sectional evidence on the prevalence, magnitude, and types of metaphysical attributions and belief changes related to psychedelic experiences. I find moderate evidence for some metaphysical attributions and beliefs changed from psychedelic experiences in some settings. Drawing on historical and contemporary philosophical work ranging from William James to Chris Letheby, I argue for adopting an agnostic frame regarding metaphysical claims in research and clinical settings and provide relevant guidelines from the clinical literature.