I am a doctoral researcher in philosophy at the University of Helsinki, with a primary focus on psychedelics, values and self-transcendence. In my doctoral research, I seek to elucidate the morally significant changes that psychedelic experiences can catalyze, especially focusing on theoretical investigation of psychedelic value changes, including their correlation with self-transcendence or ’unselfing’.
More broadly, my intellectual project involves developing a deep empirically based and philosophically sophisticated understanding of values, self-transcendence and other ’farther reaches of human nature’, and the various practices which can cultivate wisdom and foster value changes and self-transcendence.
Central to my academic pursuit is a conviction that we have a compelling philosophical and scientific rationale for (re)integration of methods for self-transcendence and wisdom development into our societies, given the challenges faced by living beings on earth. Psychedelics in conjunction with other practices, I believe, is one of these methods.
My research has been funded by the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation and the Ane and Signe Gyllenberg Foundation.
Juuso Kähönen 