Breaking through the doors of perception,

consciousness, and existence: to what extent does

psychedelic phenomenology ontologically
depend on external factors?
Journal of Psychedelic
Studies
DENIS FRADKINp

DOI:
University of Bristol, United Kingdom
10.1556/2054.2022.00168
© 2022 The Author(s)
Received: January 22, 2021 • Revised manuscript received: September 1, 2022 • Accepted: September 3, 2022

ABSTRACT
ORIGINAL RESEARCH As reliable facilitators of characteristically unique altered states of consciousness that are notoriously difficult
PAPER to comprehend, psychedelics naturally attract a multidisciplinary scope for their research, with direct rele-
vance to neuroscience, pharmacology, psychology, as well as philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and epis-
temology — disciplines united by the common inquiry into the nature of conscious experience. Accordingly,
the central focus of this paper concerns the metaphysical debate between internalism and externalism about
whether psychedelic phenomenology — in particular, its ‘breakthrough’ level — could be said to directly
ontologically depend on external factors, as well as the interpretive implications arising from each of those
positions. The main contributions of the author of this paper include the provision of a coherent account of
the essential phenomenal characteristics of psychedelic experiences, the integration of relatively fragmented
philosophical debates on psychedelic phenomenology into the traditional internalist-externalist framework in
metaphysics, as well as the exploration of the extent to which the externalist position on psychedelic phe-
nomenology — traditionally associated with non-naturalism — is compatible with naturalistic explanatory
frameworks. In Part 1, psychedelic phenomenology will be outlined first, after which the central inquiries of
this paper will be contextualised and qualified. In Part 2, the internalist position on psychedelic phenom-
enology — both its strong and weak versions — will be discussed. In Part 3, the externalist position will be
explored, which will be followed by a final evalutation between the three positions presented in this paper.
The paper will conclude in favour of the weak internalist position, and that whilst the externalist position
remains significantly more speculative than both the strong and the weak internalist positions, the externalist
position cannot be rejected altogether until further progress in consciousness research is made.

KEYWORDS
psychedelics, philosophy, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology, epistemology, internal-
ism, externalism, non-Euclidean geometry, quantum theory, pharmacology, serotonin, tryptamines, trace amines,
DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, psilocybin, LSD, neuroscience, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology,
anthropology, traditional medicine, shamanism, eastern philosophy, psychedelic renaissance, naturalism

INTRODUCTION
Etymologically, the term ‘psychedelic’ means ‘mind-revealing’ and, in the context of this
paper, denotes a class of drugs whose common phenomenology exhibits a wide spectrum of
subjective effects and intensity, ranging from mild hallucinations to “unimaginably bizarre”,
seemingly veridical interdimensional journeys called ‘breakthrough’ experiences (Gallimore,
p 2013: 455–456; Letheby, 2017: 632).
Corresponding author.
E-mail: denisfradkin@me.com Psychedelics have a long history of human use — one that predates modern human civili-
sation, putatively evidenced by the traditional Amazonian psychedelic brew ayahuasca (Galli-
more, 2013: 455–456). In the Western world, however, the use of psychedelics on a societal scale
is a comparatively recent phenomenon, whose emergence took place no earlier than the mid-
twentieth century and whose popularisation is commonly associated with Albert Hofmann,

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2 Journal of Psychedelic Studies
Timothy Leary, Alexander Shulgin, and Terrence McKenna
(Gallimore, 2013: 456). The subsequent rise of the recreational
use of psychedelics and the emergence of themes influenced by
psychedelic phenomenology in art and music during the 1970s
resulted in a socio-political controversy, leading to the legal
recategorisation of psychedelics as ‘Schedule I’ drugs in the
USA — a category characterised by high potential for abuse
and no medicinal function, despite no empirical evidence
supporting these claims about psychedelics — a legal “para-
digm problem” (Frecska, Bokor, & Winkelman, 2016: 2) that
rapidly spread worldwide, effectively resulting in the complete
prohibition of standardised psychedelic research on human
subjects for some decades (Letheby & Gerrans, 2017: 6). More
recently, however, there has been a shift in the Western world
towards a more permissive legal policy in respect to the use of
psychedelics for both research and recreational purposes — a
legal shift so comparatively drastic that the current paradigm
has been labelled as a “psychedelic renaissance”: a period of
academic rediscovery of psychedelics (Letheby, 2017: 638).
As reliable facilitators of characteristically unique altered
states of consciousness that are notoriously difficult to compre-
hend, psychedelics naturally attract a multidisciplinary scope for
their research, with direct relevance to neuroscience, pharma-
cology, psychology, as well as philosophy of mind, metaphysics,
and epistemology — disciplines united by the common inquiry
into the nature of conscious experience. Accordingly, the central
focus of this paper concerns the metaphysical debate between
internalism and externalism about whether psychedelic phe-
nomenology — in particular, its ‘breakthrough’ level — could be
said to directly ontologically depend on external factors, as well as
the interpretive implications arising from each of those positions.
The main contributions of the author of this paper include the
provision of a coherent account of the essential phenomenal
characteristics of psychedelic experiences, the integration of
relatively fragmented philosophical debates on psychedelic phe-
nomenology into the traditional internalist-externalist frame-
work in metaphysics, as well as the exploration of the extent to
which the externalist position on psychedelic phenomenology —
traditionally associated with non-naturalism — is compatible
with naturalistic explanatory frameworks. In Part 1, psychedelic
phenomenology will be outlined first, after which the central
inquiries of this paper will be contextualised and qualified. In Part
2, the internalist position on psychedelic phenomenology — both
its strong and weak versions — will be discussed. In Part 3, the
externalist position will be explored, which will be followed by a
final evalutation between the three positions presented in this
paper. The paper will conclude in favour of the weak internalist
position, and that whilst the externalist position remains signif-
icantly more speculative than both the strong and the weak
internalist positions, the externalist position cannot be rejected
altogether until further progress in consciousness research
is made.
PART 1. PSYCHEDELIC PHENOMENOLOGY
As a subset of the conceptually broad ‘hallucinogen’ class,
‘classical psychedelic’ denotes a class of pharmacologically
active compounds traditionally defined in terms of their main
neuropharmacological commonality: agonism (i.e. activation)
of the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor subtype, which distinguishes
classical psychedelics from other commonly self-administered
hallucinogens with somewhat related (yet distinct) phenome-
nologies, such as kappa-opioid receptor agonists (e.g. salvinorin
A: the active compound in the Salvia divinorum species of sage
plant) and dissociative anesthetics (e.g. ketamine and nitrous
oxide) (Milliere, 2017: 5). The most commonly self-adminis-
tered and researched compounds falling under the ‘classical
psychedelic’ definition are, inter alia, N,N-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT,
LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and ergine (Milliere, 2017: 5;
Wallach, 2009: 91, 93). In contrast, ‘nonclassical’ psychedelics,
such as the 2C-X compounds (e.g. 2C-B), exhibit 5-HT2A re-
ceptor agonism that is low or negligible, or perhaps even 5-
HT2A antagonism (i.e. deactivation) — though their phe-
nomenologies are nevertheless not significantly dissimilar to
those of ‘classical’ psychedelics (Villalobos, Bull, Saez, Cassels, &
Huidobro-Toro, 2004: 1167). In any case, for reasons of
empirical consistency and argumentative coherence, only
‘classical’ psychedelics (henceforth simply ‘psychedelics’) will be
considered in this paper.
1A. Subjective effects
Although psychedelics vary in regards to their chemical
families, they exhibit a distinctive and to a great extent ho-
mogenous set of typically co-occurring subjective effects (i.e.
alterations in the user’s conscious experience) (Milliere,
2017: 5). At equivalent moderate dosages, the subjective
differences between various psychedelic compounds are
largely a matter of intensity and ‘flavour’ of the experience
(with one notable exception: some psychedelics do not
significantly alter visual perception, which will be addressed
in Part 2) (Wallach, 2009: 93). The phenomenologically
distinctive feature of psychedelics is, in essence, their ten-
dency to produce altered states of consciousness significantly
influenced by the user’s ‘set and setting’ (i.e. state of mind
and immediate physical and interpersonal environment) and
characterised by wide-ranging, non-negligible changes in
sensory, affective, self-perceptive, temporal, and spatial
phenomenal modalities (Letheby, 2015: 173).
A complete description of the entire spectrum of psy-
chedelic phenomenology lies outside the spatial constraints
of this paper — for the present purposes, it will suffice to
simply group psychedelic experiences into three broad levels
of cumulative subjective intensity, roughly correlative with
dosage and specific compound ingested. Level 1 is occa-
sioned by virtually all psychedelics at low to moderate
dosages and is characterised by geometric visual hallucina-
tions (i.e. a perceived overlay of geometrically patterned
imagery on top of visible surfaces at lower dosages and
geometric metamorphosis of objects at higher dosages),
synesthesia (i.e. experience of one sensory stimulus through
two or more sensory modalities simultaneously), and
emotional intensification — thus exhibiting significant ef-
fects only in regards to sensory perception and affective
experience (Dell’erba, Brown, & Proulx, 2018: 127; Frecska,
2018: 163; Letheby, 2015: 174). At Level 2, self-consciousness
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
and temporal perception become significantly affected. Level 2
is occasioned by virtually all psychedelics at moderate to high
dosages and, in addition to Level 1 effects, characterised by
ego dissolution (i.e. where the subjective boundary between
the self and the external world is deactivated and replaced
with a sense of metaphysical continuity with the immediate
environment as well as the world at large, thus ‘dissolving’
one’s ego, or sense of self, and by implication, the sense of
corporeal embodiment) and time dilation (i.e. perceived
deceleration in, or even complete stoppage of the passage of
time) (Letheby & Gerrans, 2017: 6).
Level 3 is occasioned most reliably (and perhaps exclu-
sively) by high dosages of N,N-DMT and denotes the anec-
dotally termed ‘breakthrough’ experience: in essence, a
psychedelic experience which, in addition to a hyper-
intensified set of Level 2 effects, exhibits extreme alterations
in spatiotemporal (i.e. both temporal and spatial) perception,
subjectively perceived as a transportation through a spatio-
temporally boundless multiverse to seemingly autonomous,
altogether “alien” realities (Emilsson, 2016b; Gallimore, 2013:
456–458; Psychedelic Community, 2020). For reasons of
empirical consistency, I will take ‘breakthrough psychedelic
experiences’ to be equivalent to ‘higher-dosage subjective
effects of N,N-DMT (hereafter simply ‘DMT’)’, although it
remains to be empirically verified whether ‘breakthrough’
subjective effects are occasioned exclusively by high dosages
of DMT or whether they simply constitute the highest level
of progressive complexity of all psychedelic phenomenology.
Although the potent psychoactive effects of DMT, a
naturally occurring compound found in numerous plant and
animal species, are not a new discovery for humanity at large
— in fact, DMT is the main component in ayahuasca, an
orally-administered traditional brew that has been used by
indigenous Amazonian populations as a multi-purpose
medicinal agent at least for centuries, if not for millennia —
DMT was first lab-synthesized only in 1931 and identified as
psychoactive in 1956 (Blakemore, 2019; Barker, 2018: 2;
Frecska et al. 2016: 1; Gallimore, 2013: 455–456; Leth-
eby, 2017: 174; Manske, 1931: 592; Szara, 1989: 237). As
opposed to the oral route of administration in the form of
ayahuasca — whose onset is slow and gradual and whose
total duration of action spans across multiple hours — the
ingestion of the pure (i.e. chemically isolated) form of DMT
through vaporisation or injection results in a significantly
shorter experience: the onset takes place within a matter of
mere seconds, peak subjective intensity is reached within
two minutes, and the average total duration of action
including residual after-effects is only fifteen to sixty mi-
nutes (Barker, 2018: 5, 10; Gallimore, 2013: 456; Psychedelic
Community, 2020). Accordingly, because of the exception-
ally brief timescale between onset and peak effects unique to
vaporised and injected DMT, the monumental subjective
intensity of ‘breakthrough’ effects is most frequently and
reliably achieved through vaporisation and injection, as
opposed to the oral route of DMT administration (Galli-
more, 2013: 456, 486–487).
In turn, it follows to elaborate on the phenomenology
exclusive to psychedelic experiences at the ‘breakthrough’ level.
3
The perceptual content of ‘breakthrough’ experiences is
multi-sensory and primarily visual, characterised by fully
immersive hallucinations of ‘crystal’ worlds constituted
entirely out of energy or information through which the user
moves at the outset, often followed by interactive, telepathic
encounters with entities that are alien-like, elf-like, insect-
like, or human-archetypal (such as spirits or deities) in the
form of eidetic hallucinations (i.e. where the hallucinated
content emerges from a pre-existing interference pattern)
that are typically surrounded by visions of hyperadvanced
technology, environments, semantic networks, and linguistic
systems (Emilsson, 2016b; Gallimore, 2013: 475–476; Kent,
2010: 90–91; Kins, 2019; Strassman, 2001: 179). In terms of
structure, ‘breakthrough’ experiences typically exhibit ge-
ometry that is hyperbolic (i.e. a surface with constant
negative curvature) and fractal (i.e. scale-free, geometrically
constant arrangement) — in regards to both objects and the
surrounding space itself, and the surrounding space in turn
exhibits extra-dimensional spatiotemporal complexity (i.e.
comprised of more than three physical dimensions of space
and one dimension of time, beyond those of ordinary
physical reality) (Emilsson, 2016b; Psychedelic Community,
2020; Strassman, 2001: 181).
Furthermore, the semantic content of ‘breakthrough’
experiences typically comprises representations of knowl-
edge that seemingly extends beyond the scope of human
comprehensibility, as well as of mind-independence about
the experience’s metaphysical aspects (i.e. the nature and
structure of objects, entities, and worlds encountered during
the experience) — accompanied by overarching epistemic
feelings of lucidity (i.e. lack of impairment of mental func-
tioning) and veridicality (i.e. objective truthfulness) (Frec-
ska, 2018: 172; Gallimore, 2013: 475–476; Kins, 2019;
Psychedelic Community, 2020). Lastly, the aforementioned
phenomenal characteristics of ‘breakthrough’ experiences
are indeed typical — they are “strikingly” common across
users (Gallimore, 2013: 482–483). In turn, this gives rise to
the ‘hard problem’ of psychedelic phenomenology (‘HPPP’)
— specifically, in regards to its ‘breakthrough’ level.
1B. The ‘hard problem’ of psychedelic phenomenology
In essence, the HPPP can be stated as follows: why exactly do
‘breakthrough’ psychedelic experiences have the common
phenomenology that they have?
In order to conclusively resolve the HPPP, however, a
conclusive resolution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness
(i.e. explaining the exact relationship between neuro-
cognitive processes and conscious experience) is required,
which is yet to be found — the shared element between these
two problems being an inquiry into the nature of conscious
experience (Chalmers, 1997; Maldonato & Dell’Orco, 2010:
213). Nevertheless, it is possible to at least narrow down the
range of plausible explanations on which a conclusive res-
olution to the HPPP could be based: because of the
phenomenological cross-commonality that ‘breakthrough’
experiences exhibit, they must be directly ontologically
dependent on some objective fundamental factors, which
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4 Journal of Psychedelic Studies
gives rise to the metaphysical internalism-externalism debate
central to this paper — whether these factors are internal
(i.e. exist within individual human brains) or external (i.e.
exist outside of individual human brains). In turn, the
answer to this question will depend on explanations about
the phenomenal characteristics and the apparent phenom-
enal objectivity exhibited by ‘breakthrough’ experiences.
Accordingly, the HPPP can be broken down into three
interdependent questions:
A) The Ontological Dependence Question (‘ODQ’): are the
factors which ‘breakthrough’ phenomenology is directly
ontologically dependent on internal or external?
B) The Phenomenal Characteristics Question (‘PCQ’): how
can the ‘alien’ perceptual content, the extraordinarily
complex structure, and the ‘transhuman’ semantic con-
tent of ‘breakthrough’ experiences be explained?
C) The Phenomenal Objectivity Question (‘POQ’): how can
the phenomenological cross-commonality and perceived
veridicality of ‘breakthrough’ experiences be explained?
Thus, in order to even begin approaching the HPPP, its
subcomponents (the ODQ, the PCQ, and the POQ) must
first be addressed, the implications of which may also help
us progress further towards a resolution to the Hard Prob-
lem of Consciousness, not least because ‘breakthrough’ ex-
periences seem to stretch consciousness to its very limits.
PART 2. INTERNALISM
In essence, the psychedelic internalist position is that psy-
chedelic phenomenology is fundamentally explainable
through neurological facts, and is thus directly ontologically
dependent only on internal factors. In respect to con-
sciousness, psychedelic internalism is compatible with both
reductionism (i.e. a monist position according to which
consciousness is a direct product of neural activity) as well as
emergentism (i.e. a dualist position according to which
consciousness comes into existence — ‘emerges’ — through
a particular arrangement of internal neural processes whose
activity correlates with conscious experience) (Gallimore,
2013: 459; Letheby, 2017: 630; Pautz, 2019: 188). However,
due to spatial constraints and only incidental relevance, this
paper will remain neutral about which of those in-
terpretations is more favourable in respect to the internalist
position.
2A. Neural representation
From a strictly neurological perspective, for any world to be
perceptible, at least some part of the informational structure
of that world must be neurally represented — thus, the
external world is never directly perceptible, but only so
indirectly, through its neural representation (Gallimore,
2013: 458–459, 470). Accordingly, on the general internalist
view, ‘breakthrough’ worlds must have a neural represen-
tation that is accessed during ‘breakthrough’ experiences and
the construction of this representation is explainable via the
neural processes that construct, develop, and stabilise the
representation of our consensus world: the external world
that individual conscious agents can commonly agree to be
the world which they inhabit in the state of ordinary waking
consciousness (Gallimore, 2013: 459, 470). Neural world-
representation processes will be outlined first, which will
provide a basis for the subsequent development and analysis
of the strong internalist (Section 2B) and weak internalist
(Section 2C) positions on psychedelic phenomenology
(Gallimore, 2013: 459, 470).
The neuroscientific consensus is that neural representa-
tions are constructed from external-world information
which is encoded by patterns of neuronal connectivity in the
cerebral cortex (Gallimore, 2013: 459). Comprised of col-
umns of six neuronal layers, the cerebral cortex is parti-
tioned into functionally segregated regions that correspond
to, inter alia, the various sensory modalities (i.e. the visual,
auditory, gustatory, olfactory, somatosensory, somatomotor,
and metacognitive cortices), which are further partitioned
into billions of functionally segregated subregions in the
form of neuronal columns that correspond to their modal
subcomponents (e.g. motion, colour, shape, texture, orien-
tation, etc. in the visual cortex), which allows for a huge
range of nonconceptual (i.e. perceptually irreducible) con-
tent to be representable (Gallimore, 2013: 459–462). In turn,
functional segregation and multi-layered neuronal structure
allow cortical subregions to be simultaneously activated in
an almost limitless number of highly specific, three-dimen-
sional neuronal ‘activation patterns’ — resulting in func-
tional integration, which enables their respective
nonconceptual content representations to be integrable into
an almost limitless number of conceptual content repre-
sentations (i.e. additive constructs of nonconceptual content,
e.g. ‘forward movement of an orange sphere’), as a result of
which the external world appears highly cohesive, complex,
and phenomenally varied (Gallimore, 2013: 460–463).
Although the Binding Problem (i.e. causally explaining
the transition from functional segregation to functional
integration) remains an open empirical question, the
neuroscientific consensus is that perceptual binding is a
product of cortical interconnectivity (i.e. physical connec-
tions between functionally segregated neuronal columns
across the entire cortex which allow for strong and rapid
interactions) (Edelman, 2000; Gallimore, 2013: 462–464).
Cortical interconnectivity is made possible by the thalamus,
a neural structure through which all sensory information
except the olfactory passes before it is received by the cortex
(Sherman & Guillery, 2002: 1695). Each functionally segre-
gated neuronal column in the cortex is reciprocally con-
nected to a thalamic region, forming functionally specific
thalamocortical loops — which, when activated, produce
oscillatory electrical signals (Gallimore, 2013: 464–465). In
addition to functionally specific thalamocortical loop con-
nections, thalamic regions also project neurons to other,
non-functionally corresponding cortical subregions —
constituting non-functionally specific thalamocortical con-
nections, which thus enable connectivity between sets of
thalamocortical loops, resulting in their functional
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
integration (Gallimore, 2013: 464–465). It has been observed
that thalamocortical loop oscillations in the gamma range
(20–60 Hz) correlate with the synchronous activation of
functionally segregated neuronal columns (Engel & Singer,
2001: 16; Wang, 2010: 1195). Moreover, when a particular
set of thalamocortical loops is synchronously activated, their
gamma oscillations synchronise in mere milliseconds,
forming a transiently unified, unique neuronal structure — a
thalamocortical state (Gallimore, 2013: 464). In turn, as a
product of functional segregation and integration modulated
by the thalamocortical system, each unique thalamocortical
state yields a representation of a unique, cohesive conscious
state — a moment of conscious experience — and this is in
principle applicable to all conscious states, ordinary or
altered (Gallimore, 2013: 465).
In order to explain how the thalamocortical system
constructs, develops, and stabilises the representation of the
consensus world, cortical interconnectivity must be exam-
ined in more detail, of which there are two types: structural
and functional — the former denotes semi-permanent,
physical connections that are static and stable within the
seconds-minutes timeframe, gradually strengthened or
weakened in the hours-days timeframe depending on the
frequency of their activation, and the latter denotes highly
dynamic, transient correlations of synchronous activation,
which change in the timeframe of milliseconds depending
on external information (i.e. sensory information input from
the external world) and current internal thalamocortical
activity (i.e. thalamocortical state information continuously
generated within the brain through functional segregation
and integration) (Gallimore, 2013: 465–467). A reciprocal
causal relation thus exists between them: structural con-
nectivity patterns determine the range of functional con-
nectivity patterns more likely to be activated, and conversely,
functional connectivity patterns gradually strengthen or
weaken structural connectivity patterns such that current
internal thalamocortical activity continues to match the
patterns of external information continuously received
through evolution, ontogenic development, and conscious
experience as closely as possible (Gallimore, 2013: 467–468).
Eventually, very little external input is needed in order to
construct world representations, evidenced by the brain’s
ability to construct dream worlds without receiving any
external information in real-time — entirely through inter-
nal thalamocortical activity analogous to that which takes
place during waking, using the same, previously developed
repertoire of thalamocortical states and also exhibiting
gamma oscillation synchronisation (Edelman, 2000; Galli-
more, 2013: 468; Massimini et al. 2010: 176).
Accordingly, the considerations above contextualise the
subsequently divergent debate on psychedelic phenomenol-
ogy, which can be outlined as follows: whether the neural
representation of ‘breakthrough’ worlds is modulated
entirely by internal brain activity (strong internalism, Sec-
tion 2B), analogously to dream worlds, or whether it is also
modulated by external information, analogously to the
consensus world — and if the latter, whether this informa-
tion is accessed entirely via an alternative evolutionary
5
world-representation already contained in the brain (weak
internalism, Section 2C) or at least partially received in real-
time from an otherwise unperceived, fully autonomous
alternate dimension or reality (externalism, Part 3) (Galli-
more, 2013: 470, 492). The interpretative implication here is
that strong internalism regards ‘breakthrough’ phenome-
nology as an elaborate hallucination, whilst weak internalism
and externalism both subscribe to the ‘channel-tuning’ thesis
— the idea that during breakthrough experiences, con-
sciousness ‘tunes’ to a different ‘world channel’ — and
diverge on whether the locus of the ‘psychedelic channel’ is
internal or external, respectively (Letheby, 2017: 631–632;
Strassman, 2001: 311).
2B. Strong internalism
The strong internalist position on psychedelic phenome-
nology subscribes to the ‘elaborate hallucination’ thesis,
which can be stated as follows: psychedelics produce their
phenomenology entirely through the destabilisation of in-
ternal brain activity and are therefore agents of perceptual
misrepresentation, which means that the epistemic feelings
of lucidity and veridicality occasioned by ‘breakthrough’
experiences are in fact illusory (Kent, 2010: 71; Letheby,
2017: 631–632).
The ‘elaborate hallucination’ thesis is fundamentally
premised on psychedelic neuropharmacology and its rela-
tion to neural representation. In respect to the neurophar-
macological mechanisms of action of psychedelics, the
principally affected neurotransmitter (i.e. a compound
which regulates brain activity) is serotonin (5-HT): a neu-
romodulator (i.e. a category of neurotransmitter which alters
the excitatory and inhibitory action of neurons on a global
scale, which means that such a compound influences the
activity of the entire cerebral cortex) whose neurobiological
functions not only comprise the regulation of mood, sleep,
memory, appetite, and involuntary action of muscles that
control blood pressure and digestion — but also the mod-
ulation of internal thalamocortical activity (Gallimore, 2013:
468, 470; Kent, 2010: 59). Out of the seven recognised types
of serotonin receptors (5-HT1 to 5-HT7), the 5-HT2A re-
ceptor subtype is central in producing the subjective effects
of psychedelics: it has been observed that the subjective in-
tensity of any particular psychedelic strongly correlates with
the intensity of its 5-HT2A receptor affinity and, further-
more, 5-HT2A has been traditionally linked to the visual
subjective effects of psychedelics (Kent, 2010: 62; Krae-
henmann et al. 2017: 2031; Nichols, 2004: 131).
The activation of 5-HT2A receptors, which are abundant
in cortical pyramidal neurons (i.e. the excitatory neurons
that form the cortical component of a thalamocortical loop),
increases the probability that their respective pyramidal
neurons will be activated — in contrast, the activation of
5-HT1A receptors, located alongside 5-HT2A receptors,
decreases this probability, as a result of which these two
receptor subtypes have an opposing relation in respect to
neuronal excitability (Araneda & Andrade, 1991: 399).
Accordingly, the balance between 5-HT2A and 5-HT1A
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6 Journal of Psychedelic Studies
receptor activation in cortical pyramidal neurons determines
the level of neuronal excitability across the entire cerebral
cortex (Gallimore, 2013: 471). Exhibiting the same opposing
relation, 5-HT2A and 5-HT2A receptors are also present in
inhibitory interneurons, which are regarded as central in
generating thalamocortical gamma oscillations (that corre-
late with neuronal column synchronisation, resulting in
specific thalamocortical states, as mentioned previously)
and, in addition, a subpopulation of interneurons in the
fourth layer of the cortex is responsible for the global syn-
chronisation of gamma oscillations (Cardin et al. 2009: 663;
Llinas, Ribary, Contreras, & Pedroarena, 1998: 1841). In
effect, the balance between 5-HT2A and 5-HT1A receptor
activation in cortical pyramidal neurons and inhibitory in-
terneurons — which modulates neuronal excitability and the
generation and synchronisation of gamma oscillations,
respectively — is central in the modulation of internal tha-
lamocortical activity, and thus, the manner in which the
brain represents the external world (Gallimore, 2013: 471).
In states of ordinary waking consciousness, 5-HT2A and
5-HT1A receptor subtypes are activated and occupied by
serotonin, which regulates the balance between their acti-
vation (Nichols, 2004: 148). However, since psychedelics are
partial agonists (i.e. activators) of the 5-HT2A subtype (to
which they bind in competition with serotonin) and do not
significantly affect the 5-HT1A subtype, the 5-HT2A-5-
HT1A activation balance is destabilised in psychedelic states
— in favour of significantly elevated neuronal excitability
and thus hypersensitivity to incoming external information,
as well as significantly elevated generation and global syn-
chronisation of gamma oscillations and thus the expression
of novel, hyperintegrated thalamocortical states (Gallimore,
2013: 472–473). Subjectively, the combination of hypersen-
sitivity to external information and novel, hyperintegrated
thalamocortical states is likely to result in multimodal
perception as well as novel conceptual interpretations of
incoming external information, which thus provides a strong
internalist explanation of Level 1 effects — synesthesia and
geometric visual hallucinations, respectively, and emotional
intensification being explainable as a natural response to
unforeseen novelty (Gallimore, 2013: 473). Moreover, fully
immersive hallucinations of ‘alien’ worlds, hyperadvanced
environments, technology, semantic networks, linguistic
systems, as well as entity-emergent eidetic hallucinations
that characterise the perceptual content of ‘breakthrough’
experiences can also be explained this way — as the sub-
jective products of a novel repertoire of hyperintegrated
thalamocortical states — according to strong internalism:
‘alien’ corresponding to ‘novel’ and ‘hyperadvanced’ corre-
sponding to ‘hyperintegrated’ (Gallimore, 2013: 473).
However, it has been objected that the Integrated In-
formation Theory-based ‘hyperintegration’ model outlined
above is inconsistent with early empirical observations of an
overall decrease in internal thalamocortical activity in
respect to both psilocybin and ayahuasca experiences (Car-
hart-Harris et al. 2012: 2138; Frecska et al. 2016: 7; Riba et al.
2002: 613). Nevertheless, this objection is refutable on both
theoretical and empirical grounds. First, according to IIT
(the theoretical basis of the ‘hyperintegration’ model), at any
given time, inactive neurons contribute to the expression of
a thalamocortical state equally to those that are activated —
the relevant factor here is the overall conceptual structure
specified by an activation pattern, not activation itself — and
thus, the assumption that neurons contribute to integration
only if they are activated is misguided (Tononi & Koch,
2015: 9–10). Moreover, a more recent neuroimaging study
revealed that, following LSD ingestion, integration is indeed
significantly elevated in the visual cortex — strongly corre-
lating with visual subjective effects, which is consistent with
the primarily visual nature of LSD experiences — and
decreased in the numerous cortical regions of the Default
Mode Network (DMN), strongly correlating with ego
dissolution effects, which thus explains why an overall (but
not complete) decrease in internal thalamocortical activity
may be observed during psychedelic experiences, given their
tendency to exhibit strong ego dissolution effects at mod-
erate to high dosages (Carhart-Harris et al. 2016:
4853, 4856).
Functionally, the DMN does not significantly influence
sensory perception, which means that its disintegration is
not inconsistent with the prediction of hyperintegration of
sensory perception-specific cortical regions during psyche-
delic experiences (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014: 6). Instead, the
DMN modulates, inter alia, metacognition (e.g. self-reflec-
tion and introspection), temporal perception (i.e. simulation
of past and future events), and minimises prediction errors
about one’s spatial location and bodily awareness, which —
taken together with its observed disintegration correlative
with ego dissolution effects — has promoted the consensus
view in neuroscience that the DMN is the direct neural
correlate of self-consciousness (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014: 6;
Letheby, 2017: 634–635; Letheby & Gerrans, 2017: 7–8;
Milliere, 2017: 15). Accordingly, the disintegration of the
DMN during psychedelic experiences provides a strong
internalist explanation for Level 2 effects — ego dissolution
and time dilation — as well as the feelings of ‘alienness’ in
respect to the user’s perceived location that characterise
psychedelic experiences at the ‘breakthrough’ level.
Furthermore, DMN disintegration gives rise to the meta-
physical implication that self-consciousness is not necessary
for conscious experience, which is consistent with the
Buddhist phenomenalist view that self-consciousness is an
emergent, not a fundamental phenomenon (Coseru, 2018:
97–98; Letheby, 2015: 187). Interestingly, although inci-
dentally, meditation — one of the practical aspects of
Buddhist phenomenalism — also results in DMN disinte-
gration when practiced long-term, albeit to a lesser extent
than acute psychedelic experiences (Fingelkurts, Fingelkurts,
& Kallio-Tamminen, 2016: 27).
The aspects of ‘breakthrough’ experiences that remain to
be explained from the strong internalist position are their
structure and semantic content, which can be done from the
premise that the transition of the thalamocortical system
from a stabilised, integrated state to a destabilised, hyper-
integrated state that occurs with the onset of a psychedelic
experience can be described in mathematical terms — as a
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
transition from dynamical linearity to nonlinearity (Kent,
2010: 71). Nonlinear dynamical systems generate exponen-
tial complexity of (in this case, perceptual) output in pro-
portion to (in this case, informational) input, where the
output feeds back on itself until its complexity reaches in-
finity and where small changes in input result in unpre-
dictable, highly divergent sets of output values — in contrast,
linear dynamical systems generate sequential output
complexity, where small changes in input result in stable,
predictable output values (Kent, 2010: 75–77). In states of
ordinary waking consciousness, 5-HT2A receptors in the
pyramidal neurons of the fifth cortical layer project oscilla-
tory electrical signals (which are produced by thalamocort-
ical loops, as discussed previously) upward into the first
cortical layer in the form of linear feedback loops, binding
perceptual information across the entire cortex in order to
produce a predictable representation the external world —
accordingly, in psychedelic states, where the 5-HT2A-5-
HT1A activation balance is destabilised, these feedback
loops become nonlinear, according to strong internalism
(Kent, 2010: 68–71, 76).
Thus, subjectively, the nonlinearity of cortical feedback
loops presumably occasioned by psychedelics would result in
perceptual output progressively feeding back on itself,
generating infinitely increasing exponential complexity to the
point of total perceptual overload, which thus provides a
general explanation for the ‘monumental’ subjective intensity
that characterises ‘breakthrough’ experiences (Kent, 2010:
78–79). Furthermore, since nonlinearity describes the
destabilisation of the 5-HT2A-5-HT1A activation balance
that affects the entire thalamocortical system, nonlinearity
applies to any informational input and thus can be used to
explain any specific aspect of ‘breakthrough’ experiences that
follows its general principle of infinitely increasing
complexity. Accordingly, nonlinearity can be used to explain
the ‘extraordinarily complex’ structure of ‘breakthrough’
experiences: in respect to spatial informational input,
nonlinear feedback loops would subjectively result in infi-
nitely increasing geometric complexity — first, in respect to
objects and as time progresses, the surrounding space itself
— extending beyond the three dimensions of space perceived
in states of ordinary, linear consciousness; in respect to
temporal informational input, infinitely increasing temporal
complexity would obtain such that, in combination with the
nonlinear amplification of spatial informational input, it
would be possible to perceive the same spatiotemporal input
as an extra-dimensional, spatiotemporally infinite multiverse
(Kent, 2010: 78–79). Moreover, according to the ‘nonline-
arity’ model, the fractal and hyperbolic properties that
characterise the geometry of ‘breakthrough’ experiences are
nothing more than a subjective rendering of nonlinear
feedback loops, since these properties are consistent with the
basic principle of nonlinearity and are indeed traditionally
regarded as mathematically nonlinear (Emilsson, 2016b). In
effect, according to the ‘nonlinearity’ model, the ‘extraordi-
narily complex’ structure of ‘breakthrough’ experiences is
simply another aspect of the ‘extraordinarily elaborate’
hallucination typically occasioned by high dosages of DMT.
7
Furthermore, the ‘nonlinearity’ model can be empirically
substantiated: it has indeed been demonstrated that
nonlinear dynamical activity occurs in the human brain —
entailed by the observation that electrical signal activity in
the human cortex measured by an electroencephalograph
can be graphically represented in abstract space in the form
of higher-dimensional (i.e. above three abstract dimensions)
fractal attractors using the technique of delay coordinate
embedding (i.e. plotting data against itself across a constant
time interval in higher mathematical dimensions), up to the
value of 4.8 dimensions (Walling & Hicks, 2003: 164–165).
The term ‘fractal’ denotes mathematically irregular shapes
that lie between discrete dimensions, whose structure is
nonlinear and scale-free — it remains self-similar irre-
spective of the scale of magnification — as a result of which
the lines of a fractal shape are infinitely long yet remain
confined to finite space, whilst ‘attractor’ denotes the pattern
created through the graphic representation of sets of output
values determined by continuously changing input values
(Walling & Hicks, 2003: 161–162). Higher-dimensional
fractal attractors have also been observed in the electrical
signal activity of the brains of other species, where the
highest graphically representable dimension that generates a
fractal (as opposed to random scattering) in relation to a
particular species correlates with the presumed stage of
evolutionary development of that species (Walling & Hicks,
2003: 165). Based on these observations and the principle
that the higher the dimension of a fractal attractor, the more
variables are required to represent it, it is plausible that the
higher the mathematical complexity with which electrical
signal activity in the cortex of a particular species can be
graphically represented such that a geometrically meaningful
result obtains (in this case, a fractal) — revealing an un-
derlying mathematical order — the more overall integration
the cortex of that species would exhibit in its representation
of the external world (Walling & Hicks, 2003: 165–166).
Moreover, the suggestion above is consistent with the
view in evolutionary psychology that the capacity for ab-
stract thinking, as well as the integration of, inter alia,
conceptual and emotive information evident in human
consciousness are evolutionary developments and thus are
not unchanging, objective aspects of perception (Adamski &
Borowik, 2014: 88; Zaborowski, 1998: 48). Accordingly, it
has been argued that in order for a conscious perceptual
system to have a psychedelic experience that contains
seemingly objective semantic content, that system must
possess the capacity for abstract thinking, as well as exhibit
the integration of conceptual and emotive content (Kent,
2010: 15–16). As a result, on the strong internalist view, the
semantic content as well as the accompanying epistemic
feelings of lucidity and veridicality that characterise ‘break-
through’ experiences are illusions made possible through the
evolutionary development of human metacognition — a
product of an evolutionary increase in the functional inte-
gration of the human cortex — and thus, the cross-com-
monality of ‘breakthrough’ psychedelic phenomenology is
simply a result of these universally shared properties of the
human brain. Therefore, according to strong internalism,
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8 Journal of Psychedelic Studies
psychedelic phenomenology is — at all of its levels — an
elaborate hallucination produced entirely through internal
brain activity and thus, essentially, an illusion.
However, as compelling as the strong internalist posi-
tion appears at this stage, more recent neuropharmacolog-
ical research and philosophical arguments have given rise to
the weak internalist position on psychedelic phenomenol-
ogy, which attempts to further increase the explanatory
power of the general internalist view that psychedelic
phenomenology is fundamentally explainable through
neurological facts, but rejects the strong internalist ‘elaborate
hallucination’ thesis.
2C. Weak internalism
In this section, it will be shown that the weak internalist
position renders the ‘elaborate hallucination’ thesis some-
what theoretically primitive and empirically outdated —
though it must be noted that weak internalism, in compar-
ison with strong internalism, nevertheless involves a greater
degree of speculation, whose plausibility will become more
accurately ascertainable only with the future progression of
empirical research on psychedelics.
Although there is strong neuropharmacological evidence
that psychedelics are agonists of the 5-HT2A serotonin re-
ceptor subtype (as has been discussed in the previous sec-
tion), the full extent of the mechanism of action of
psychedelics remains an open empirical question — indeed,
more recent proposals have suggested that the primary
neuroanatomical site of psychedelic action could be another
class of receptors altogether: the trace amine-associated re-
ceptors (‘TAARs’), of which there are six subtypes in the
human brain and which are present throughout the central
nervous system including areas linked to sensory perception
(Gainetdinov, Hoener, & Berry, 2018: 549; Gallimore, 2013:
474; Wallach, 2009: 91–92). Whilst the neurobiological
function of TAARs in humans has not been empirically
settled with conclusive effect, it has been shown that TAARs
indeed modulate sensory perception in insects and that a
specific mutation in the TAAR6 receptor strongly correlates
with the hallucinatory symptoms of schizophrenia, which
suggests that the TAAR6 is likely to at least partially
modulate sensory perception in humans (Scheiner, Oney,
Blenau, & Erber, 2002: 545; Vladimirov et al. 2007; Wallach,
2009: 91). Moreover, it has been observed that several TAAR
subtypes allow the binding of neurochemicals other than the
classical trace amines (p-tyramine, beta-phenethylamine,
tryptamine, and octopamine), which suggests the existence
of additional endogenous (i.e. naturally occurring within the
body) TAAR ligands (i.e. endogenous neurochemicals which
bind to a particular receptor) (Zucchi, Chiellini, Scanlan, &
Grandy, 2006: 967). ‘Trace’ denotes the exceptionally low
concentrations at which these neurochemicals occur in the
brain, whilst ‘amine’ denotes a class of neurochemicals that
contain a nitrogen atom hanging off a carbon ring, which
includes, inter alia, serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline
— neuromodulators — whose function is to control the
global timing of neuronal activation in the entire cortex
(Gallimore, 2013: 470, 474; Kent, 2010: 57). Furthermore,
naturally occurring psychedelics DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and
psilocybin are highly similar in chemical structure to the
neuromodulator serotonin and the trace amine tryptamine,
and are also classified as amines (Kent, 2010: 57–58).
Moreover, it has been shown that DMT and 5-MeO-DMT
naturally occur at trace concentrations in the human brain,
blood, cerebral spinal fluid, and urine, which has given rise
to the neuroscientific consensus that these psychedelics are
endogenous metabolites and thus have a natural neurobio-
logical function in humans — as opposed to being solely
exogenous chemicals without any natural neurobiological
function whose strong psychoactive effects are explainable
via their chemical structure and particular receptor affinity
alone (e.g. LSD or methamphetamine) (Dean et al. 2019;
Wallach, 2009: 91). Yet, although it has been over 55 years
since the discovery of the endogenous psychedelics, their
exact natural neurobiological function still remains a matter
of debate (Corbett, Christian, Morin, Benington, & Symth-
ies, 1978: 139; Franzen & Gross, 1965: 1052; Frecska et al.
2016: 2; Gallimore, 2013: 483). Thus, in accordance with the
considerations above and the fact that the endogenous
ligand of the TAAR6 receptor remains unknown, it has been
argued that the endogenous ligand of the TAAR6 receptor
may be one or more of the endogenous psychedelics and —
because of the similarities in chemical structure and phe-
nomenology at low to moderate dosages that psychedelics
exhibit as a class — that TAAR6 may constitute another
significant site of action in respect to all psychedelics,
alongside the 5-HT2A receptor (Wallach, 2009: 91).
The view that the 5-HT2A receptor is not the only sig-
nificant site of psychedelic action has been substantiated on
the basis that 5-HT2A agonism alone is unable to account
simultaneously for both the lack of visual subjective effects
in, inter alia, 5-MeO-DMT experiences, and the presence of
visual subjective effective in, inter alia, DMT, LSD, and
psilocybin experiences — even though it has been shown
that the non-visual 5-MeO-DMT exhibits higher 5-HT2A
receptor affinity than the highly visual DMT — thus, if the
5-HT2A receptor were the only significant site of psyche-
delic action, this difference would not exist (McKenna,
Repke, Lo, & Peroutka, 1990: 196; Wallach, 2009: 91, 93).
However, it has been objected that the lack of visual effects
pertinent to 5-MeO-DMT is due to the fact that 5-MeO-
DMT also has a higher affinity for the 5-HT1A receptor than
DMT, based on the observation that the co-administration
of DMT and a 5-HT1A antagonist increases the subjective
intensity of the highly visual DMT experience, which sug-
gests that 5-HT1A agonism may inhibit visual effects — and
thus, the 5-HT2A receptor remains the sole significant site of
psychedelic action (Strassman, 1996: 121; Wallach, 2009: 93).
Nevertheless, this is successfully refutable via a counterex-
ample — AMT: a psychedelic which exhibits high 5-HT2A
affinity and significantly lower 5-HT1A affinity, yet pro-
duces only minimal visual effects — accordingly, because
5-MeO-DMT and AMT exhibit different levels of 5-HT1A
affinity yet both lack significant visual effects, it is implau-
sible that 5-HT1A agonism indeed inhibits visual effects,
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
which means that the subjective effects of psychedelics
cannot be explained via 5-HT2A agonism alone (Wallach,
2009: 93; McKenna et al. 1990: 196). Moreover, the
empirical study that led to the conclusion that the 5-HT2A
receptor is the sole significant site of psychedelic action —
where it has been observed that the entire spectrum of the
subjective effects of psilocybin can be neutralised by 5-
HT2A antagonists ketanserin and risperidone — took place
in 1998, before the discovery of the TAAR class in 2001, and
because it remains unknown whether ketanserin and ris-
peridone also have an antagonistic effect on TAARs, it is
certainly plausible that not only the 5-HT2A receptor, but
also one or more of the TAARs (TAAR6 being the most
likely candidate, as discussed above), constitutes a signifi-
cant site of psychedelic action, which would explain why all
classical psychedelics are 5-HT2A agonists yet not all of
them produce visual effects (Vollenweider, Vollenweider-
Scherpenhuyzen, Babler, Vogel, & Hell, 1998: 3897; Wal-
lach, 2009: 92–93).
It has been further argued that if the TAAR class is
indeed involved in the neuropharmacological mechanism of
action of psychedelics, especially DMT, ‘breakthrough’ ef-
fects must be primarily — not only significantly — mediated
by the TAAR class, not the 5-HT receptor class (Wallach,
2009: 92). It has been shown that the activation of the 5-HT1
and 5-HT3 receptor groups produces anxiolytic effects in
mice and that DMT is an agonist of the 5-HT1 receptor
group, which means that the anxiolytic effects occasioned by
DMT only at threshold-level dosages (i.e. the lowest dosage
range at which any subjective effects are noticeable) are
more likely to be mediated by the 5-HT receptor class than
the TAAR class (Delgado et al. 2005: 9; McKenna et al.,
1990: 196; Strassman, 1996: 121). However, given that one or
more of the endogenous psychedelics is likely to be an
endogenous ligand the TAAR6 receptor (which is likely to at
least partially modulate sensory perception in humans, as
discussed above) and not any of the 5-HT receptors (whose
endogenous ligand is widely accepted to be solely serotonin),
the extreme alterations in sensory perception that charac-
terise ‘breakthrough’ experiences occasioned by exogenously
administered DMT at sufficiently high dosages are likely to
be primarily mediated by the TAAR class, and only
secondarily by the 5-HT class (Nichols, 2004: 148; Wallach,
2009: 92). In effect, it is certainly plausible that the TAAR
class is only activated at dosages sufficient to produce
‘breakthrough’ effects and that effects at threshold-level to
sub-‘breakthrough’ dosages are significantly mediated solely
by the 5-HT class, in the manner proposed by the strong
internalist ‘elaborate hallucination’ thesis based on the
‘hyperintegration’ and ‘nonlinearity’ models discussed in
Section 2B (Wallach, 2009: 92). Thus, on the weak internalist
view, the strong internalist position must apply only to sub-
‘breakthrough’ phenomenology (where the TAAR class is
presumably not activated) and that ‘breakthrough’ phe-
nomenology (where the TAAR class is presumably acti-
vated) instead replicates the natural neurobiological function
of endogenous DMT associated with the TAAR class — a
function likely to be directly or indirectly related to the
9
modulation of sensory perception, given the plausibility that
DMT is an endogenous ligand of the TAAR6 receptor and
that the TAAR6 receptor is at least partially involved in the
modulation of sensory perception (Wallach, 2009: 92).
Moreover, the traditional view that the natural neuro-
biologicalfunction of DMT is anxiolytic – associated withits
threshold-level dosage effects, presumably reflecting itslow
endogenous concentrations in humans – can be ruledout,
since, given the plausibility that DMT is an endogenousli-
gand of the TAAR6 receptor and that its anxiolytic effectsare
likely to be mediated by the 5-HT1 receptor groupinstead,
the natural neurobiological function of DMT ismore likely
to be linked to its presumably TAAR-mediated‘break-
through’ sensory effects than to its 5-HT-mediatedanxiolytic
effects (Jacob & Presti, 2005: 930; Wallach, 2009: 92).
Moreover, the traditional view that the natural neuro-
biological function of DMT is not associated with its high-
dosage sensory effects (which on this view are merely inci-
dental to its anxiolytic effects) is also implausible: in order to
sustain the this view, the high-dosage sensory effects of
DMT must be interpreted as unnatural, unnecessary, or
unsafe within the typical dosage range that produce
‘breakthrough’ effects – and yet, the opposite is true: high-
dosage ‘bbreakthrough’ sensory effects of DMT pose no risk
of physical harm in a supervised setting, are typically
accompanied by strong feelings of lucidity and veridicality
(as opposed to cognitive impairment or intoxication) and
have been used intentionally and extensively for medicinal,
therapeutic, and spiritual purposes by indigenous Amazo-
nian populations throughout history, as well as have recently
regained popularity among Western researchers and psy-
chotherapists, reflecting the shift towards a psychedelic re-
naissance (Gallimore, 2013: 484–485; Frecska et al. 2016: 1).
Accordingly, if the natural neurobiological function of DMT
could be associated with its high-dosage sensory effects and
if these effects are mediated by the TAAR class (as discussed
above), then it is likely that the natural neurobiological
function of DMT is related, directly or indirectly, to the
modulation of sensory perception (primary to any such
function related to low-dosage anxiolytic effects).
This view has been further substantiated through the
well-received and evidentially compelling — yet at this stage,
still inconclusive — recent hypothesis that DMT is an
endogenous neurotransmitter, whose physiological function
may also extend to neuromodulation (Barker, 2018: 11–12).
First, DMT is highly similar in chemical structure to the
neuromodulator serotonin (as mentioned previously), and
both compounds can be chemically derived from the trace
amine tryptamine, which in turn can be derived from the
essential amino acid tryptophan — in fact, DMT appears to
be of lesser molecular complexity than even tryptamine it-
self, as well as all other psychedelics, suggesting that its
evolutionary presence in the human body may predate that
of serotonin (Gallimore, 2013: 485–486, 488, 495). More-
over, pure DMT appears to be neuropharmacologically
unique in the sense that, out of all psychedelics, its duration
of action is the most brief, its subjective intensity relative to
dosage is the most extreme, and its metabolism and
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10
subsequent clearance from the brain is the most rapid —
which would be expected if DMT were a neurotransmitter
(Gallimore, 2013: 486–487). In addition, it has been shown
that DMT is actively accumulated and selectively compart-
mentalised in the brains of rats and dogs, which enables the
possibility of its release into specific brain regions at specific
times — as is the case with neurotransmitters — and it is
plausible that a similar mechanism exists in humans, due to
neuroanatomical similarities (Gallimore, 2013: 487; Wallach,
2009: 94; Yanai et al., 1986: 141). Furthermore, DMT is
unlikely to be a neurohormone (the only other type of neural
signal carrier): essentially, neurohormones are nonselective
(i.e bind indiscriminately to all receptors that they are
chemically capable of binding to), whilst neurotransmitters
are selective (i.e. bind to specific receptors), and DMT is
certainly selective (Wallach, 2009: 92). Accordingly, and
taking into account the plausibility that DMT is an endog-
enous ligand of the TAAR6 receptor, it is highly plausible
that DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter — and given
its unique neuropharmacological and neurotransmitter-like
properties, it is highly plausible that DMT does indeed have
a natural neurobiological function directly or indirectly
related to sensory perception.
However, endogenous DMT has never been empirically
observed in the human body above trace concentrations, let
alone those sufficient to produce alterations in sensory
perception (Gallimore, 2013: 491–492). For this reason and
the fact that endogenous DMT still naturally occurs at high
concentrations in numerous plant and animal species, a
somewhat speculative, yet at the same time evidentially
compelling hypothesis has been proposed by Gallimore
(2013: 491–494): that DMT is an ancestral neuromodulator,
whose functional significance and endogenous concentra-
tion levels in humans have gradually decreased with the
progression of evolution. The fundamental premise of this
hypothesis is that whilst the thalamocortical system has
developed the stable consensus world-representation
through the course of evolution under the regulation of se-
rotonin and modulation by external information, the tha-
lamocortical system has also developed an altogether
separate, equally stable ‘breakthrough’ world-representation,
except that the latter took place under the regulation of
endogenous DMT (Gallimore, 2013: 488–491). Accordingly,
on the ‘ancestral neuromodulator’ hypothesis, the repertoire
of thalamocortical states that is expressed at any given time
depends on whether the 5-HT2A-5-HT1A activation bal-
ance in the cortex is currently controlled by serotonin or
DMT, which also explains why the consensus world is now
perceived as a default state: endogenous DMT is no longer
present in humans above trace concentrations, unlike sero-
tonin (Gallimore, 2013: 481, 488–491). However, in order
for this to even be a logical possibility, it must first be shown
that the worlds neurally represented in DMT states, at any
phenomenological level, could be modulated by external
information — otherwise, there is no reason to accept that a
separate, ‘breakthrough world’ repertoire of thalamocortical
states had ever been developed in addition to the ‘consensus
world’ repertoire.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
The capacity of the human brain to generate world
representations without any external informational input,
entirely through internal thalamocortical activity — using
the same repertoire of thalamocortical states that represent
the consensus world — is most clearly exemplified by dream
states (Gallimore, 2013: 465–466, 482). This has been
empirically substantiated through the observation that
dream states and ordinary waking consciousness are
phenomenologically continuous — in particular, that both
dream states and ordinary conscious states can and often do
exhibit the same types of events and activities that comprise
their perceptual content, that the duration of those activities
tends to be proportionately similar, and that the function-
ality of the sensory modalities in dream states is not
significantly dissimilar to that of ordinary conscious states
(Kahan & LaBerge, 2011: 494; Schredl & Hofmann, 2003: 298).
`Therefore, if the DMT world-representation is not modu-
lated by any external information, it must to some degree be
phenomenologically comparable to the repertoire of thala-
mocortical states that represents dream worlds and the
consensus world. However, DMT worlds at the ‘break-
through’ level are “utterly incomparable” in phenomenal
character to either dream worlds or the consensus world —
instead, ‘breakthrough’ worlds seem to be represented by an
altogether different, highly stable repertoire of thalamocort-
ical states, evidenced both by their phenomenological ‘alien-
ness’ and cross-commonality (Gallimore, 2013: 481–483).
Accordingly, if ‘breakthrough’ worlds are phenomenologi-
cally incomparable to dream worlds or the consensus world,
as well as exhibit phenomenological ‘alienness’ and cross-
commonality, this entails that ‘breakthrough’ worlds are
expressed through a repertoire of thalamocortical states that
is stable and altogether different to the ordinary repertoire,
which means that the ‘breakthrough’ repertoire cannot be
modulated entirely through internal thalamocortical activity,
leaving only one possible option as to how the ‘breakthrough’
repertoire could have been developed: by being modulated by
external information (Gallimore, 2013: 483–484). Therefore,
at least at the ‘breakthrough’ level, the worlds neurally
represented in DMT states must be modulated by external
information and thus the ‘ancestral neuromodulator’
hypothesis remains plausible.
Furthermore, on the ‘ancestral neuromodulator’ hy-
pothesis, these two different repertoires were developed in a
diurnal cyclic pattern — the ‘consensus world’ repertoire
during the day and the ‘breakthrough world’ repertoire
during REM sleep — resulting in their “parallel neural
evolution”, which is consistent with the observation that
serotonin concentrations in the human brain decrease dur-
ing REM sleep, during which an increase in endogenous
DMT concentrations presumably took place instead — until
this presumably no longer conferred an adaptive advantage,
resulting in an evolutionary decrease of endogenous DMT
concentrations in humans (Gallimore, 2013: 493–494;
McCarley, 2007: 302). Although the nature of this presumed
adaptive advantage remains an open question, it has been
proposed that the ancestral practice of the exogenous
ingestion of DMT-containing plants may have served as a
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
catalyst for the evolutionary development of the capacity of
imagination in the human brain, which may indeed reflect
the presumed evolutionary function performed by the
‘breakthrough world’ repertoire — a function which could
thus have been related to the envisioning (via imagining) of
possibilities such that the foresight necessary for better
environmental adaptation or survival could be developed,
for example (McKenna, 1992: 19).
In addition, since information processing is more
complex and more efficient during sleep than waking, this
may explain why the ‘breakthrough’ world appears highly
complex and hyperadvanced compared to the consensus
world — their respective representations may have devel-
oped at vastly different rates, reflecting this difference
(Giuddia, 2010: 226; Wagner, Gais, Haider, Verleger, &
Born, 2004: 352). The plausibility of the ‘parallel neural
evolution’ model is further increased by the fact that the
biosynthesis (i.e. endogenous production) of melatonin
(also a chemical derivative of tryptamine) in the human
pineal gland takes place only during darkness and thus
follows the same diurnal pattern — and since it has been
observed that DMT is actively biosynthesised in the rodent
pineal gland and that the human pineal gland indeed
contains the enzymes necessary for DMT biosynthesis, it is
plausible that DMT biosynthesis in higher-than-trace
concentrations in humans took place in the pineal gland
and had been gradually replaced by melatonin over
the course of evolution (Barker, 2018: 13; Gallimore,
2013: 494).
In effect, is it plausible that the natural neurobiological
function of DMT, if it is indeed an endogenous neuro-
modulator is to trigger and sustain the transition from the
‘consensus world’ repertoire to the ‘breakthrough world’
repertoire of thalamocortical states (and perhaps the acti-
vation of the TAAR6 receptor by DMT constitutes the initial
triggering mechanism, if DMT is indeed its endogenous
ligand) — an ancestral function whose neurobiological ne-
cessity gradually became obsolete with the evolutionary
developments in conscious perception, theoretically result-
ing in a gradual decrease of endogenous concentrations of
DMT in humans. This is consistent with the theoretical
proposal by Carhart-Harris that psychedelics have an
‘entropic’ effect on conscious states, in the sense that psy-
chedelic states resemble ancestral conscious states that are in
theory ‘entropic’: characterised by higher sensitivity to
external information and thus both lower minimisation of
sensory prediction errors as well as a wider range of typically
expressed thalamocortical states than modern conscious
states that are ‘negentropic’ (i.e entropy-suppressing) (Car-
hart-Harris et al., 2014: 7, 13; Carhart-Harris et al., 2016:
4858; Gallimore, 2013: 492). Accordingly, the weak inter-
nalist position does not require the ‘breakthrough’ world-
representation to be modulated by external information
from an alternate reality, but only so from the same
consensus reality through which the consensus world-rep-
resentation was developed, nor does it require external in-
formation to be received in real-time during ‘breakthrough’
experiences, but only so that this had occurred at some point
11
in evolution. Thus, on this view, the informational sources of
these two world-representations are not necessarily meta-
physically distinct (as externalism would claim), but could
rather have been the same one source — our consensus
reality at different evolutionary stages of conscious percep-
tion, which thus provides an internalist explanation for both
the phenomenal characteristics and the phenomenal objec-
tivity that characterise ‘breakthrough’ experiences and
without their dismissal as simply ‘elaborate hallucinations’
(Gallimore, 2013: 494, 498). Thus, according to weak
internalism, at dosages sufficient to occasion ‘breakthrough’
experiences, DMT is indeed capable of ‘channel-tuning’, in
the sense that it facilitates a shift between two different
world-representations, and because both of these represen-
tations were on this view developed by the brain through the
course of evolution, this shift is fundamentally explainable
through neurological facts, and therefore this is ultimately
an internalist position.
Although somewhat speculative, the weak internalist
position examined here greatly increases the explanatory
power of the general internalist position — in particular, by
providing plausible explanations for the endogenous pres-
ence of DMT in humans, its neurotransmitter-like proper-
ties, as well as its possible neurobiological function —
without claiming that ‘breakthrough’ experiences are
essentially illusory or misrepresentative and thus without
contravening the majority opinion of psychedelic users,
unlike strong internalism. Externalism (Part 3, below) fol-
lows the same trend, offering the greatest explanatory power
at the expense of the least empirical substantiation out of the
three positions examined in this paper.
PART 3. EXTERNALISM
Psychedelic externalism subscribes to the ‘channel-tuning’
thesis and diverges from weak internalism by claiming that
the locus of the ‘psychedelic channel’ is external of the
brain, not internal to it — thus rejecting both the strong
internalist ‘elaborate hallucination’ thesis and the general
internalist position that psychedelic phenomenology is
fundamentally explainable through neurological facts. The
externalist conception of the ‘channel-tuning’ thesis is that
DMT, at dosages sufficient to produce ‘breakthrough’ ef-
fects, alters neurophysiological parameters such that the
brain is able to receive semantically coherent and episte-
mically valuable information (the ‘epistemic premise’)
from a normally unperceived, fully autonomous alternate
dimension or reality (the ‘metaphysical premise’) — in
real-time (Strassman, 2001: 311; Strassman et al., 2008). In
respect to consciousness, the externalist position broadly
rejects the neuroscientific materialist view that con-
sciousness emerges from (emergentism) or is equivalent to
(reductionism) internal brain activity as fundamentally
fallacious and instead takes the broad view that the
ontological basis for consciousness is to be found some-
where in external reality, which is compatible with several
theoretical positions that take consciousness to be a
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12
substance or property that is in some sense metaphysically
fundamental (e.g. panpsychism, panprotopsychism,
neutral monism, idealism) (Frecska, 2018: 156–157; Per-
eira et al., 2018: 182–183).
Because the externalist conception of the ‘channel-tun-
ing’ thesis consists of two premises — an epistemic and a
metaphysical — it must first be shown that the epistemic
premise can be plausibly sustained, which will be done in the
section below. In turn, the plausibility of the metaphysical
premise, which is traditionally associated with non-natu-
ralism, ultimately depends on whether this premise can be
grounded in naturalistic explanations (i.e. those consistent
with the processes posited by the natural sciences), due to
the consensus view in the philosophy of mind that natu-
ralism is to be favoured over non-naturalism — and
although naturalising the metaphysical premise requires a
great degree of speculation, it will be argued in Sections 3B
and 3C that this position cannot yet be dismissed altogether
(Papineau, 2020).
3A. Epistemic access
The epistemic premise that underpins the externalist
conception of the ‘channel-tuning’ thesis is that ‘break-
through’ experiences facilitate epistemic access (i.e. the po-
tential for the acquisition of knowledge) to information
contained in an external dimension or reality which cannot
be experienced in the state of ordinary waking conscious-
ness, putatively evidenced by the traditional Amazonian
shamanic function of communal integration of knowledge
acquired through ayahuasca experiences (Frecska,
2018: 156).
In order to plausibly sustain the epistemic premise and
qualify its externalist features, a distinction between two
modes of epistemic access must first be made — the
perceptual and the intuitive: the former denotes the tradi-
tional Western empiricist method of acquiring knowledge
objectively, by observation of external reality through the
sensory modalities, and the latter denotes the traditional
Eastern spiritualist method of acquiring knowledge through
pure conscious experience, without sensory processing —
best exemplified by meditation (Frecska, 2018: 156, 163–165;
Jung, 1972b: 383; Reddy, Pereira, de Souza Leite, & Roy,
2020: 1). Furthermore, knowledge acquired perceptually can
most of the time be expressed linguistically and is therefore
linguistically transferable (such as the mathematical relation
between force, mass, and acceleration), whereas knowledge
acquired intuitively is purely experiential and thus always
nonlinguistic — and therefore not linguistically transferable
(such as the concept of ‘redness’) (Frecska, 2018: 165).
Accordingly, it has been theorised that these two modes of
epistemic access resemble (metaphorically, at this stage), the
two realms that fundamentally comprise physical reality —
the local and the nonlocal, respectively: the former denotes
physical reality that exists within the constraints of three
dimensions of space and one dimension of time, and the
latter denotes physical reality that exists beyond those
spatiotemporal constraints — in the sense that, in order to
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
acquire knowledge in the perceptual mode, knowledge-
containing information must be localised in four-dimen-
sional spacetime such that it can be processed through the
sensory modalities, whereas in the intuitive mode, where
knowledge-containing information bypasses the sensory
modalities, directly manifesting in consciousness, this is
presumably not required, on the psychedelic externalist view
(Frecska, 2018: 155–156). Accordingly, the nature of the
epistemic access that ‘breakthrough’ experiences facilitate on
the externalist view is nonlocal, since the manner in which
they confer perceived knowledge on users is subjective, the
knowledge is purely experiential, and the ontological source
of this knowledge appears to exist beyond the spatiotem-
poral constraints of ordinary physical reality, and this is the
externalist nature of the epistemic premise (Frecska,
2018: 168).
As a result, it has been proposed that the exogenous
administration of DMT may have performed a historical
function to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge that
enabled the creation of, inter alia, language, mathematics,
and architecture — at the time when this knowledge would
appear to greatly surpass the the progress of human civili-
sation — and this accords with the observation that the
semantic content of ‘breakthrough’ experiences typically
contains representations of knowledge whose complexity is
seemingly incomprehensible in the state of ordinary waking
consciousness or within the spatiotemporal constraints of
ordinary waking reality, which on the externalist view thus
suggests that such knowledge must originate from a nonlocal
source (Kins, 2019; Psychedelic Community, 2020). There-
fore, although highly speculative, it is certainly plausible that
the putative historical examples of individuals
acquiring knowledge nonlocally, supposedly through
“divination” — which include, inter alia, Aristotle and
Pythagoras — involved the ingestion of DMT-containing
plants, similarly to the historical use of ayahuasca by
indigenous Amazonian populations dating back at least as
far as 1000 years ago, according to recent archeological ev-
idence (Frecska, 2018: 166–167; Blakemore, 2019). Accord-
ingly, this ‘exogenous’ proposal can be viewed as
complementary to the weak internalist argument that
endogenous DMT may have performed an evolutionary
function, in the sense that the exogenous ingestion of DMT
presumably performing a historical function of epistemic
access could be viewed as an extension of the presumed
evolutionary function performed by endogenous DMT
(McKenna, 1992: 19). Therefore, on the externalist view, the
semantic content and the epistemic feelings of lucidity and
veridicality typically occasioned by ‘breakthrough’ experi-
ences are not illusory (strong internalism) or even incidental
(weak internalism), but epistemically valuable and func-
tionally significant.
Although it is in principle impossible to provide specific
examples of knowledge that has been or could be acquired
through nonlocal epistemic access that ‘breakthrough’ ex-
periences are presumably capable of facilitating due to the
purely experiential, nonlinguistic nature of such knowledge,
it is plausible that, in accordance with the putative examples
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
and proposals above, ‘breakthrough’ experiences are capable
of facilitating some level of epistemic access (the epistemic
premise) from some other source, that the mode of this
epistemic access is unlike the local mode which characterises
empiricism, and that the local mode is not the only possible
mode of epistemic access. Therefore, the epistemic premise
cannot yet be rejected with certainty, which at this stage is
arguably sufficient, because the extent of the plausibility of
the epistemic premise ultimately depends on the extent of
the plausibility of the metaphysical premise, which will
examined in the section below.
3B. Quantum nonlocality
The metaphysical premise underpinning the externalist
conception of the ‘channel tuning’ thesis is that the nonlocal
realm of physical reality constitutes the ontological — not
merely metaphorical — source of knowledge acquirable
through nonlocal epistemic access and that this can groun-
ded in naturalistic explanations (i.e. consistent with the
natural sciences) (Frecska, 2018: 156; Papineau, 2020). On
the psychedelic externalist view, this premise can be
grounded in one of the interpretations of quantum me-
chanics, metajustified by the fact that the mathematical
validity of its principles has been confirmed by numerous
experiments — indeed, there is a consensus among physi-
cists that one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics
must be true, though which interpretation that is remains a
matter of debate (Williams, 2016: 329).
To begin, the quantum-mechanical principle of entan-
glement denotes that an interaction between two or more
subatomic particles creates a mutual correlative relation
(a ‘quantum correlation’) between their quantum states
(defined by spin and orbital angular momentum), which in
turn gives rise to the phenomenon of quantum nonlocality,
which has indeed been empirically observed: whenever a
change occurs in the quantum state of one of the entangled
particles, an opposite change occurs in the quantum state of
the other(s) — instantaneously, or seemingly so — irre-
spective of the local physical distance between them and
thus unconstrained by the four-dimensionality of local
physical reality, suggesting that the nature of this connec-
tion between entangled particles is nonlocal (Commissariat,
2015; Frecska, 2018: 156–158; Shute, 2019: 8–9; Williams,
2016: 340). Thus, on the externalist conception of the
‘channel-tuning’ thesis, ‘breakthrough’ experiences some-
how enable the brain to function as a ‘quantum antenna’
that facilitates real-time reception of semantically coherent
and epistemically valuable information from the nonlocal
realm (Frecska, 2018: 156). Accordingly, on the externalist
view, by presumably facilitating the reception of informa-
tion from the nonlocal realm, ‘breakthrough’ experiences
enable conscious states to be modulated by nonlocal in-
formation — resulting in veridical, yet seemingly ‘alien’
perceptual content — and therefore, ‘breakthrough’ phe-
nomenology is directly ontologically dependent on external
factors (Frecska, 2018: 161). Therefore, the exact point of
divergence between the externalist and the weak internalist
13
conceptions of the ‘channel-tuning’ thesis is that the
externalist considers the difference between the two ‘chan-
nels’ — ‘consensus reality’ and ‘breakthrough experience’ —
to be metaphysical, not merely evolutionary, in the sense
that these two channels represent metaphysically distinct
realms of physical reality, not the same realm at different
evolutionary stages.
The externalist conception of the ‘channel-tuning’ thesis
is fundamentally premised on the proposal that, in addition
to the informational structure of internal brain activity being
characterisable by fractality (as explained in Section 2B), the
physical structure of the brain may also be fractal — which is
certainly plausible given the fact that fractality characterises
both the physical structure of the universe as well as
numerous physiological structures of biological organisms,
including those of humans, best exemplified by the
sequential branching of blood vessels and bile ducts, sug-
gesting that all physical reality may be fundamentally fractal
in structure, resembling a holographic projection (Hameroff,
2020; Hameroff & Penrose: 2014: 46; Walling & Hicks, 2003:
163). Accordingly, if the brain’s physical structure is indeed
fractal, in addition to its informational structure, their scale-
free structural self-similarity would in principle enable the
brain to ‘shift’ from the ‘default’ neuronal level to various
other levels in the physical-informational fractal hierarchy,
including the quantum level — such that it would then
presumably be possible to receive nonlocal information,
which would in turn enable the brain to represent the
external world via novel, yet still veridical conscious states —
and this is what happens during ‘breakthrough’ experiences,
whose fractal spatial geometry thus constitutes a veridical
representation of the fundamental geometry of physical re-
ality, on the externalist view (Frecska, 2018: 161; Hameroff,
2020). The externalist reason why the external world is
represented by neuronal-level processes and in four di-
mensions by default is that the resulting conscious states are
modulated by external information that is exclusively local
and are thus ‘negentropic’ in nature (in the same sense as
conceived by weak internalism) — they effectively minimise
environmental prediction errors (Frecska, 2018: 162).
Furthermore, on the externalist view, ‘shifting’ to the
quantum level such that conscious states become modulated
by nonlocal information allows for the possibility of facili-
tating real-time nonlocal epistemic access — a function that
is, or may have naturally performed by endogenous DMT,
which could be seen as an extension of the world-repre-
sentation switching function proposed by weak internalism
(Frecska, 2018: 163).
It follows to examine whether quantum mechanics is at
least in principle consistent with the metaphysical premise of
psychedelic externalism — that the nonlocal realm of
physical reality, by virtue of which quantum nonlocality is
possible, constitutes the ontological source of the knowledge
acquirable through nonlocal epistemic access. There are two
types of interpretations of quantum mechanics that may
allow, at least in principle, the possibility of conscious states
being modulated by nonlocal information such that — in
line with the metaphysical premise — this could facilitate
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14
epistemic access that is ontologically, not merely meta-
phorically, ‘nonlocal’: interpretations based on the principle
of entanglement and interpretations based on the concept of
potentiality (i.e. an ontocosmological substratum posited as
the metaphysical ground for all existence) (Williams, 2016:
336). According to entanglement-based interpretations,
nonlocal information is contained in quantum correlations
formed between entangled subatomic particles (Frecska,
2018: 156). One such interpretation is provided by the
Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory, according to
which conscious states emerge from patterns of quantum
correlations between oscillation-coherent collections of
subatomic particles sustained by microtubules (i.e cylindri-
cal structures constituted of protein) within neurons and
coherent collections of subatomic particles in the external
environment, which entails that the brain and the external
environment have a symbiotic quantum relationship
(Emilsson, 2016a; Frecska, 2018: 160–161; Hameroff &
Penrose, 2014: 39; Williams, 2016: 340). Thus, on this view,
during ‘breakthrough’ experiences, the internal quantum
processes that determine the manner in which the brain
receives external information are altered such that conscious
states become modulated by novel patterns of quantum
correlations between the brain and the external environ-
ment, resulting in the reception of novel — ‘nonlocal’ —
information, and this is how nonlocal epistemic access
presumably occurs (Emilsson, 2016a).
However, it has been objected that entanglement-based
interpretations are inherently based on dubious assump-
tions. The first assumption is that it is possible for quantum
correlations to be sustained between subatomic particles and
macroscopic objects — in this case, neurophysiological
structures called microtubules — which contravenes the
consensus in quantum mechanics that the entanglement of
subatomic particles with macroscopic objects triggers rapid
decoherence, and because oscillation coherence is necessary
to sustain quantum correlations, it is unlikely that quantum
correlations between external subatomic particles and
neurophysiological structures can be sustained, and there-
fore, neither can the transmission of nonlocal information
into the brain (Williams, 2016: 340–341). It has been argued
in response that coherence between external subatomic
particles and neurophysiological structures is a mathemat-
ical possibility, which entails the possibility of transmission
of nonlocal information into the brain (Hagan, Hameroff, &
Tuszynski, 2000: 1). However, even if this is true, entan-
glement-based interpretations are based on another dubious
assumption: that the brain is somehow able to receive
semantically coherent nonlocal information from quantum
correlations — which is, again, unlikely, since this requires
coherent collections of subatomic particles large enough to
generate semantically coherent nonlocal information to exist
in inherently non-coherent natural local external environ-
ments, which has never been previously demonstrated
(Williams, 2016: 342). Therefore, it seems unlikely that
entanglement-based interpretations can plausibly accom-
modate the possibility of conscious states being modulated
by nonlocal information such that nonlocal epistemic access
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
would be possible — and thus unlikely that the metaphysical
premise of psychedelic externalism could be plausibly sus-
tained though entanglement-based interpretations of quan-
tum mechanics.
In any case, potentiality-based interpretations of quan-
tum mechanics appear more successful in accommodating
the possibility of ontologically nonlocal epistemic access.
One such explanation is provided by Bohm’s Implicate
Order theory, which posits an ontocosmological state space
(the ‘implicate order’) comprised entirely out of neutral (i.e.
neither physical nor mental), nonlocal information (‘active
information’) that contains all possible manifestations of
reality — ‘potentialities’ — and determines the outcome
states of all aspects of manifested, observable reality (the
‘explicate order’) both at the subatomic and the macroscopic
scale, which thus constitutes the ontological source of both
consciousness and physical matter and serves as a meta-
physical ‘bridge’ between them (Bohm & Hiley, 1993: 384;
Williams, 2016: 332, 342–344). Accordingly, the Implicate
Order theory suggests that the mental and the physical as-
pects of observable reality (the ‘explicate order’) are meta-
physically reflexive — their existence is reflected and
constituted by the same neutral fundamental state space (the
‘implicate order’) (Bohm & Hiley, 1993: 384).
In order to explain the phenomenon of quantum non-
locality in the first place, potentiality-based interpretations
claim that physical reality, at its most fundamental level of
‘potentiality’, must be extra-dimensional — existing in more
than the three spatial dimensions and one temporal
dimension that comprise local physical reality — because, on
Bohm’s view, the contradictory relation between quantum
nonlocality and theories of local physical reality (e.g. theory
of relativity) suggested the existence of an extra-dimen-
sional, nonlocal realm of physical reality from which both
quantum reality and local physical reality emerge (Williams,
2016: 347). Accordingly, the spatiotemporal extra-dimen-
sionality of the potentiality realm provides an externalist
explanation of the perceived extra-dimensional structure of
‘breakthrough’ experiences, as well as the element of
hyperadvancement present in some of the perceptual con-
tent of those experiences, which on this view constitute
quasi-veridical representations of the spatiotemporal possi-
bilities that could manifest from potentiality — ‘quasi-’ due
to the element of possibility rather than actuality.
In respect to accommodating the possibility of ontologi-
cally nonlocal epistemic access, potentiality-based in-
terpretations effectively circumvent the problems relating to
quantum coherence faced by entanglement-based in-
terpretations: by proposing that the ontological source (in
this case, the ‘implicate order’) of nonlocal information is
metaphysically distinct from and prior to the quantum-me-
chanical realm in which entanglement occurs, potentiality-
based interpretations render quantum coherence irrelevant
in determining whether nonlocal information can manifest
in consciousness (Williams, 2016: 343). However, the ques-
tion remains as to how conscious states could be modulated
by nonlocal information that exists in an ontocosmological
realm such that nonlocal epistemic access would be possible.
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
Following the Implicate Order theory, both consciousness
and physical matter emerge from the same neutral realm of
potentiality, whose fundamental constituent — ‘active in-
formation’ — is both inherently probabilistic in nature and
possesses proto-conscious properties that serve as precursors
to conscious states, aimed to accommodate both conscious-
ness and physicality, which entails some form of neutral
monism (i.e. the view that the fundamental constituents of
reality are neither entirely mental nor physical but instead
possess or constitute both properties) (Pereira, Nunn, Pre-
gnolato, & Nixon, 2018: 189; Williams, 2016: 346–347).
Thus, on this view, during ‘breakthrough’ experiences, the
patterns of ‘active information’ that manifest in conscious-
ness are altered such that the state space of the phenomenal
possibilities encoded by ‘active information’ that could
manifest in consciousness is significantly expanded, and
since a greater range of phenomenal possibilities entails a
greater range of experiential knowledge that can be acquired
from the realm in which all nonlocal information is con-
tained, this constitutes nonlocal epistemic access. Moreover,
an increase in the range of the phenomenal possibilities that
could manifest in consciousness also provides an externalist
explanation of how the phenomenal characteristics of
‘breakthrough’ experiences originate — they are an expan-
sion of the state space of the possible conscious states that
could manifest (Pereira et al, 2018: 195; Shute, 2019: 19;
Williams, 2016: 343). However, at this stage, this explanation
is far from naturalistically acceptable and mirrors the strong
internalist ‘hyperintegration’ model albeit at a far lower level
of detail — and therefore requires further substantiation as
well as interpretive qualification if this explanation is to
provide any plausible ground for the metaphysical premise of
psychedelic externalism.
Specifically, and taken together, the posited proto-
conscious properties and probabilistic nature of ‘active in-
formation’ aim to accommodate the quantum-mechanical
principle of wave-particle duality — that subatomic particles
exhibit both wave-like and particle-like characteristics —
which gives rise to the phenomenon of wave-particle
collapse famously observed in the ‘double-slit’ experiment,
in which subatomic particles exhibit probabilistic, wave-like
behaviour before their quantum state is measured, but upon
measurement, their probabilistic, wave-like state appears to
collapse into a localised, particle-like state (Gardiner, 2015:
30). In turn, the phenomenon of wave-particle collapse gives
rise to the still unresolved Measurement Problem: identi-
fying the exact causal basis for wave-particle collapse and the
relevance of consciousness in this phenomenon — since
there is nothing to suggest how a physical measuring
apparatus, being comprised of the same subatomic particles
as those under observation, could instigate wave-particle
collapse absent of conscious intention to make a measure-
ment (Arvan, 2019: 349–350; Williams, 2016: 329). In
response to the Measurement Problem, the Implicate Order
theory suggests that conscious intention causally affects the
nonlocal field of ‘active information’ that in turn determines
both the physical outcome states and the conscious states
that observe them, which requires ‘active information’ to
15
have both probabilistic and proto-conscious features (Wil-
liams, 2016: 331, 344). As a result, on Bohm’s view, physi-
cality and consciousness are equally fundamental properties,
suggesting that consciousness is not an emergent, but an
intrinsic property of the fundamental constituents of reality,
which entails non-reductive physicalism — the view that
consciousness is conceptually irreducible to purely physical
(or material) constituents — a view that is rather contro-
versial under the current materialist paradigm in the natural
sciences (Papineau, 2020; Shute, 2019: 10–11). Although the
Implicate Order is thus an unorthodox interpretation of
quantum mechanics under the current materialist paradigm,
being a theory that is non-reductive and thus one that is
considerably difficult to verify experimentally, it has been
prospected that in order to conclusively resolve both the
Measurement Problem and the Hard Problem of Con-
sciousness, a shift away from the materialist paradigm might
be necessary, suggesting that it may be too early to dismiss
potentiality-based interpretations of quantum mechanics as
implausible altogether (Shute, 2019: 15–18; Williams, 2016:
346–347). However, this does not constitute a positive
naturalistic ground for the metaphysical premise of psy-
chedelic externalism about nonlocal epistemic access, which
means that from a naturalistic perspective, this premise
cannot be sustained, at least under the current materialist
paradigm. Accordingly, I will henceforth attempt to deter-
mine the extent to which the concept of a neutral dimension
of potentiality is even conceptually justified as an explana-
tory basis for psychedelic externalism, which follows in the
section below.
3C. Transpersonal consciousness & potentiality
If we accept that individual conscious agents and the pre-
sumed proto-conscious constituents of fundamental reality
are indeed metaphysically reflexive, as the Implicate Order
theory suggests, this allows, at least conceptually, for some
form of nonlocal, transpersonal consciousness to be emer-
gent from this proto-conscious field of fundamental con-
stituents and in principle accessible by individual conscious
agents, given the element of metaphysical reflexivity (Pereira
et al. 2018: 195–196; Shute, 2019: 1, 11; Williams, 2016: 343).
Although the concept of a transpersonal consciousness is,
again, controversial under the current materialist paradigm,
this concept may be useful in providing an externalist
explanation based on the concept of potentiality beyond
mere determinism about ‘active information’ as to how
‘breakthrough’ experiences could have a common phe-
nomenology as well as facilitate the reception of both
epistemically valuable and semantically coherent informa-
tion from the nonlocal realm (Kastrup, 2018: 41; Williams,
2016: 343). Accordingly, whether the psychedelic externalist
position based on the concept of potentiality is even
marginally plausible could be more accurately ascertained by
examining the extent to which the concept of a trans-
personal consciousness is indeed explanatorily powerful in
respect to ‘breakthrough’ experiences, as well as naturalis-
tically acceptable.
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16
One specific theory of a transpersonal consciousness that
is conceptually consistent with the Implicate Order theory is
Jung’s (1972a, 1972c) Collective Unconscious model —
whose shared characteristics include a posited ontocosmo-
logical dimension of possibilities, the element of meta-
physical reflexivity, as well as the possibility of nonlocal
mental connections — indeed, it has been suggested that
these two theories essentially differ only linguistically, not
metaphysically (Gardiner, 2015: 31; Shute, 2019: 12, 15–18).
In particular, the Collective Unconscious model provides an
explanatory mechanism of the metaphysical reflexivity be-
tween a transpersonal consciousness and individual
conscious agents, which, as will be discussed, yields a useful
externalist framework through which ‘breakthrough’ expe-
riences can be interpreted. After outlining the model, I will
examine the extent to which it enhances the explanatory
power of psychedelic externalism, after which I will discuss
an alternative, internalist interpretation of the model, and
then evaluate the strength of the externalist position.
The first premise of Jung’s model is that the mental
content of an individual conscious agent is partitioned into
two structures — the conscious and the unconscious: the
former contains the mental content of an individual
conscious agent of which that agent is actively aware, which
functions to sustain continuous environmental adaptation
and survival, and the latter contains the mental content of an
individual agent that has been repressed, forgotten, pro-
cessed through the sensory modalities without manifesting
in consciousness, as well as the content that is yet to man-
ifest in consciousness (Adamski & Borowik, 2014: 86–87;
Jung, 1972a, 173–176; Jung, 1972b: 151). In addition to
conscious and unconscious content at the individual level,
Jung posits the ‘collective unconscious’: a transpersonal-level
structure conceived as a heritage common to all individual
conscious agents that contains all mental content that has
manifested or could possibly manifest in individual con-
sciousness, on which all individual-level mental content
supervenes and with which the individual-level unconscious
content has a metaphysically reflexive information-
exchanging relationship, but which is directly inaccessible in
the state of ordinary waking consciousness (Adamski &
Borowik, 2014: 86–87; Jung, 1972b: 152; Mills, 2019: 40;
Shute, 2019: 5). Furthermore, the collective unconscious is
taken by Jung to indirectly manifest in ordinary waking
reality in the form of ‘archetypes’ — symbols commonly
reoccurring throughout human history, typically encoun-
tered in dreams, mythology, and art (Jung, 1972b: 213;
Shute, 2019: 6). In addition, the collective unconscious is
conceived as capable of being directly — consciously —
experienced but not consciously controlled, through
“numinous experiences” such as transcendental dreams,
characterised by feelings of metaphysical continuity with a
consciousness that seemingly extends beyond the meta-
physical boundaries of an individual mind — a ‘trans-
personal’ consciousness (Shute, 2019: 6–7).
Taken together, the elements of indirect manifestation
via archetypes, the possibility of direct yet uncontrollable
experience, and the metaphysical reflexivity between the
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
individual unconscious and the collective unconscious pro-
vide an effective — yet at this stage, still non-naturalistic —
explanatory framework for the externalist position on
‘breakthrough’ phenomenology. Accordingly, based on this
framework and in line with psychedelic externalism,
‘breakthrough’ experiences can be interpreted as a direct,
uncontrollable, numinous experiences of the collective un-
conscious, akin to transcendental dreams. This would
explain why ‘breakthrough’ experiences seem to exhibit
phenomenological cross-commonality and be accompanied
by epistemic feelings of lucidity and veridicality: on this
model, they facilitate access to a metaphysically objective,
collectively shared state space of raw mental content-possi-
bilities — the collective unconscious — at least some non-
negligible part of which instantly manifests in consciousness
during ‘breakthrough’ experiences, which can thus be
interpreted as quasi-veridical, in the same way as interpreted
in the context of the Implicate Order theory. Moreover, in
the context of this framework, the ‘alien’ worlds, entities,
semantic networks, and linguistic systems that form part of
the perceptual content of ‘breakthrough’ experiences can be
interpreted as the archetypal manifestations of the collective
unconscious and thus conceived as stable, perceptual prod-
ucts of the continuous metaphysical reflexivity between the
contents of the collective unconscious and the individual
unconscious, but nevertheless as directly ontologically
dependent on the collective unconscious — an external
factor — not individual minds taken in isolation, since the
mental contents of each individual mind, on this model, are
metaphysically grounded in the contents of the collective
unconscious (Frecska, 2018: 166–167). In turn, this also
provides an externalist explanation of the representations of
mind-independence about the metaphysical aspects of those
experiences: these aspects are ontologically independent of
the mind of each individual user, though presumably not
independent of individual minds considered collectively,
since the collective unconscious would presumably not exist
if no individual minds ever existed. Furthermore, the rep-
resentations of acquiring seemingly transhuman knowledge
typically contained in ‘breakthrough’ experiences can be
interpreted on this model as representations of the collective
knowledge acquired throughout human history contained in
the collective unconscious, whose epistemic status is pre-
sumably modulated by the same reflexive relationship —
between the individual unconscious and the collective un-
conscious, which in effect provides a possible yet non-
naturalistic metaphysical mechanism behind nonlocal
epistemic access to information that is both epistemically
valuable as well as semantically coherent (Adamski & Bor-
owik, 2014: 87).
Thus, taken together, the Implicate Order and the Col-
lective Unconscious are able to provide an interpretively
comprehensive externalist account of ‘breakthrough’ phe-
nomenology, addressing each of its aspects as outlined in
Part 1 — yet, this dual framework, at least currently, seems
to be only marginally more naturalistic than Buddhist cos-
mology, so are such ontocosmological models even neces-
sary? Not so, according to internalism, which claims that
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Journal of Psychedelic Studies
such ontocosmological models commit the fallacy of mis-
placed concreteness — by unnecessarily granting the status
of metaphysical actuality to abstract concepts almost
equivalent, if not equivalent, to the concept of infinity,
such as ‘potentiality’ and the ‘collective unconscious’
(Mills, 2019: 43, 51). Furthermore, on the internalist view,
the concept of a collective unconscious could simply be
reinterpreted as an abstract entity that consists of the
neuroanatomical structure and mental content that are
universally shared among individual conscious agents — a
‘universal unconscious’ — without the need to propose that
those contents and structures form a collective metaphysical
entity whose existence extends beyond the boundaries of
individual brains (Mills, 2019: 40, 44, 46). Therefore, ac-
cording to internalism, it is not necessary and thus parsi-
moniously undesirable to invoke non-naturalistic externalist
metaphysics in order to explain the universality of some
aspects of conscious experience — whether altered states of
consciousness such as ‘breakthrough’ experiences or the
state of ordinary consciousness. Nevertheless, weak inter-
nalists have expressed support for the idea that psychedelics
may indeed be uniquely capable of accessing unconscious
mental content at the individual level and that therefore, the
‘universal unconscious’ could constitute a significant onto-
logical factor in ‘breakthrough’ phenomenology, though the
plausibility of this speculation can only be more accurately
ascertained with the future progress in the empirical
research into the unconscious — for which psychedelics may
thus perhaps prove useful (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014: 18;
Gallimore, 2013: 494–495).
According to externalism, however, as speculative and
non-naturalistic as ontocosmological models of such as the
Implicate Order and the Collective Unconscious may appear
to internalists, such models are indeed necessary because
they at least attempt to define the ontological source of
phenomenality — conscious experience itself — something
that neural-level internalist models of consciousness, which
merely explain the ontological origin of perceptual content
— do not accomplish, and are therefore arguably no closer
to resolving the Hard Problem of Consciousness than
externalist models (Pereira et al., 2018: 194). Moreover, there
have been sophisticated — yet at this stage, still not entirely
naturalistic — attempts at grounding a potentiality-emer-
gent transpersonal consciousness in naturalistic explana-
tions, one such model having been proposed by Pereira et al.
(2018) based on both classical and quantum physics and
another having been proposed by Adamski and Borowik
(2014) based on quantum physics alone. However, I do not
take this to be sufficient evidence in respect to plausibly
sustaining the psychedelic externalist claim that ‘break-
through’ experiences facilitate epistemic access that is
ontologically nonlocal, although I do assert that potentiality-
based psychedelic externalism cannot yet be conclusively
rejected, because conceptually — but only conceptually —
this position provides an interpretively comprehensive ac-
count of ‘breakthrough’ experiences that does not seem to
fare worse, if at all, than the internalist accounts. Further-
more, I assert that the externalist position cannot yet be
17
conceived as inherently non-naturalistic, since a naturalistic
explanation of the origin of phenomenality — which would
settle the matter conclusively, or nearly so — remains
elusive. Accordingly, there is at least some marginal possi-
bility — but currently, not any more than that — that
externalism could turn out to be a more favourable position
in respect to psychedelic phenomenology as future progress
in consciousness research and quantum mechanics is made.
Nevertheless, because psychedelic externalism requires
the acceptance of numerous assumptions that have not yet
been grounded in naturalistic explanations to any extent
close to sufficient, I assert that this position is currently the
least favourable out of the three examined in this paper. This
leaves strong and weak internalism as canditates for the
most favourable position. Based on the examination of these
positions in this paper, the weak internalist position appears
more favourable. Perhaps most importantly, weak internal-
ism, unlike strong internalism, addresses the endogenous
presence of DMT in humans, whose natural neurobiological
function remains an empirical mystery yet to be settled
conclusively: a mystery that weak internalism uniquely and
arguably more than speculatively, albeit not entirely
conclusively, attempts to resolve by incorporating more
recent, relevant neuropharmacological research into its
explanatory framework than strong internalism — in
particular, the discovery of the trace amine receptor class —
which yields an interpretive account of ‘breakthrough’ ex-
periences that not only extends deep into evolution, but also
one that is consistent with the overwhelming majority
opinion of the psychedelic community, that ‘breakthrough’
experiences are not simply ‘elaborate hallucinations’ essen-
tially characterised by perceptual misrepresentation and
illusory mental content, unlike strong internalism. More-
over, weak internalism addresses the Phenomenal Objec-
tivity Question with far greater explanatory power — by
proposing that ‘breakthrough’ phenomenology is indeed in
some sense objective, or universally shared — without
invoking speculative, largely non-naturalistic externalist
metaphysics and without dismissing the element of cross-
commonality unique to ‘breakthrough’ phenomenology as
simply an illusion created by the universally shared evolu-
tionary development of metacognition, an explanation
otherwise proposed by strong internalism that appears far
more dismissive than comprehensive. Therefore, I assert that
the weak internalist position on psychedelic phenomenology
is to be favoured over the strong externalist and that both
internalist positions are to be favoured over the
externalist — unless and until further research in con-
sciousness and quantum mechanics demonstrates that the
externalist position can be unambiguously grounded in
naturalistic explanations.
CONCLUSION
After all, I would like to conclude that the weak internalist
position on psychedelic phenomenology is the most
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18
favourable, according to which ‘breakthrough’ experiences
are most likely to be experiences of an alternative world-
representation developed by the thalamocortical system
under the regulation of endogenous DMT and modulation
of external information during the stages of human evolu-
tion when the concentration levels of endogenous DMT in
theory significantly exceeded the trace concentrations of
endogenous DMT currently found in the human body.
Accordingly, it follows that the most plausible answer to
the central question explored in this paper (the Ontological
Dependence Question) seems to be that ultimately, ‘break-
through’ phenomenology is directly ontologically dependent
on internal factors — specifically, the thalamocortical system
and the endogenous presence of DMT in the human body —
with any past-world external information having only in-
direct ontological relevance to the ‘breakthrough’ experi-
ences of today ...for now.
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