Psychedelic Ego Dissolution as Extended Minimal Self

<p dir="ltr">In sufficiently high doses, classic psychedelic substances like LSD and psilocybin can cause an experience of <i>ego dissolution</i>, whereby some aspects of self-experience are altered, diminished or absent. The phenomenology of ego dissolution can have an annihilational character, which lacks typical features of self-experience. Alternatively, ego dissolution can have a unitive character, featuring a sense of merging with one’s environment, and of oneness and unity. Annihilational ego dissolution has been proposed as a candidate selfless conscious state: one lacking any awareness of oneself. The plausibility of this claim depends on how one describes <i>for-me-ness </i>or <i>minimal selfhood</i>. I suggest that some particularly intense psychedelic ego-dissolution experiences may lack self-experience entirely, including the minimal self. However, I am interested in unitive ego dissolution. I argue that in (some cases of) unitive psychedelic ego dissolution the minimal self can extend beyond its usual boundaries and encompass parts of the world. I draw on research in extended cognition as a framework and on the phenomenology of tool and object embodiment to analyse the ways the minimal self can extend in psychedelic ego dissolution. Following Heersmink’s (2015) dimensional analysis of integration between agents and cognitive artifacts, I identify the following dimensions of extended minimal self in psychedelic ego dissolution: transparency of body and world boundary; a sense of ownership over parts of the world as though parts of one’s body; noetic quality, involving a strong feeling of ultimate truth and reality; intersubjectivity; and transformation both during and following the ego-dissolution experience. By drawing parallels with the extended cognition and the phenomenology of tool and object embodiment, I aim to show that psychedelic ego dissolution can be understood as being located at a point (albeit an extraordinary one) on the spectrum of normal conscious experience.</p>