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How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant

an open letter to Professor Daniel A. Bonevac of the University of Pittsburgh

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





March 13, 2024



Good evening, Professor Bonevac.

I am a 65-year-old philosopher in Basye, Virginia, writing to thank you for your fascinating discussion of Immanuel Kant 1 's Critique of Pure Reason2 on the YouTube video posted in 20173.

I would like to suggest an idea that you may never have heard before, namely that there is another potential source of knowledge of which Kant seems to have been unaware, and that is the knowledge (both metaphysical and practical) that all tribal societies have claimed to receive via the use of those psychoactive substances which in the west we denigrate as "drugs"4. It will be argued that these states are "hallucinations," but this is surely just a Christian Science prejudice, for the filter theory of perception espoused by William James5 and Aldous Huxley6 suggests that the world that we see "on" psychoactive substances is but another aspect of that "real world out there" (the raw and "unprocessed" world of the physicist) which to Whitehead is but an inchoate world of atomic potential7.

I would argue, in fact, that a full understanding of Kant (and his potential limitations as an "intoxiphobic westerner8") cannot be undertaken without a thorough discussion of the philosophy of drug-induced states. As just one example, I took part in a "spirit walk" using peyote in Arizona in 2019, during which I saw (with eyes closed) a neon-green slide show of Mesoamerican imagery. The mere fact that the consumption of a cactus should bring about such culturally specific visions (when consumed in tribal territory, no less) should be fodder for endless philosophical discussions about metaphysics and the possibility (contra Kant) of gaining knowledge about the noumenal world. The goal of the vision, after all, appeared to be to teach me something, and indeed such plant substances are generally referred to as "teachers" by tribal healers9. At least in the tribes' minds, these drugs are definitely providing knowledge, albeit a kind of knowledge for which Kant does not seem to have made any allowance in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Unfortunately, the modern trend in academia is to "reckon without the Drug War10" and so to ignore the philosophical hints that such experiences seem to me to supply in such abundance, starting with the idea that there may be a third type of knowledge beyond both sensibility and understanding, knowledge that we acquire by obtaining surreptitious glimpses through the temporarily opened "doors of perception"11. As radical as this idea may sound, it really is just a restatement of what William James himself said about altered states over a hundred years ago in "The Varieties of Religious Experience":

"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded"12.


I would argue then that the Drug War and prohibition are limiting our knowledge of Kant. And it is getting worse. The FDA is now seeking to regulate James's pet substance, nitrous oxide13, like any other drug and thus to place it too off limits to scientific (and philosophic) investigation. It is as if the government were thereby stacking the decks in favor of Kant by making it illegal to undertake experiments that might challenge his views about how we can know things as human beings.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Author's Follow-up: October 27, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


I know, I'm as startled as you are that the Herr Professor did not quite see his way clear to respond. If you live in his vicinity, do me a favor and make sure he's okay! This is just not like him, right?




Notes:

1: What drug use could tell us about the rationalist triumphalism of Immanuel Kant (up)
2: The Critique of Pure Reason (up)
3: Kant's Transcendental Idealism (up)
4: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers (up)
5: Scribd.com: The Varieties of Religious Experience (up)
6: The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell (up)
7: The Concept of Nature (up)
8: Intoxiphobia (up)
9: Plant Teachers (up)
10: How Scientific American reckons without the drug war (up)
11: The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell (up)
12: Scribd.com: The Varieties of Religious Experience (up)
13: The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter (up)


Immanuel Kant




Anyone familiar with the philosophies of both Immanuel Kant and William James should understand that philosophers have a duty to investigate what we westerners call 'altered states' and hence have a duty to disdainfully deride and denounce the outlawing of psychoactive substances. Kant's basic message, as inspired by Hume, is that we cannot understand ultimate realities in words, but as James insists in "The Varieties of Religious Experience," it is our duty as philosophers to try to understand such realities EXPERIENTIALLY, i.e., with the help of psychoactive substances such as nitrous oxide.

"No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."


This is why it is a shame that I am the only philosopher in the world who contacted the FDA to protest their recent plans to begin treating nitrous oxide as a "drug" and so further discourage its use in metaphysical research. Alas, such goal-driven substance use is already considered unthinkable by most academics thanks to their brainwashed fealty to the drug war ideology of substance demonization. Thus I was the only philosopher in the world who spoke up on behalf of the legacy of William James and on behalf of academic freedom, for that matter, by pleading with the FDA to refrain from further marginalizing an already vastly underused substance. (In a sane world, the suicidal would be given laughing gas kits in the same way that we provide epi pens for those with severe allergies.)

But then this is the point of my entire website and the hundreds of essays that it contains: to demonstrate to the world that the drug war and prohibition are a cancer on the body politic and not just a matter of a few laws set up to discourage hedonists. For the idea that we should hate psychoactive substances is itself a metaphysical notion peculiar to the western mindset and not some logical truth that any unbiased mind must accept. Unfortunately, scientists seem to know, as it were subconsciously, that the drug war is a good thing, for it is clearly biased in the name of the materialism which they themselves profess. In the wake of the technological revolution, science is feeling omniscient, and so it naturally wants to avoid dealing with drug effects and the variability of human emotions. They cannot be quantified, as behaviorist materialism requires. So philosophers and scientists alike see a benefit in drug laws that outlaw substances that facilitate mystical feelings and ontological intimations: "Good riddance to such namby-pamby data," says the materialist in their "heart of hearts."

And so the drug war outlaws precisely those substances whose use conduces to a non-materialist view of the world, one in which we have intimations about the supposedly "unknowable" world of the noumena. And why is the noumena unknowable to us? First, thanks to the merely pragmatic nature of our perceptions as explained by Kant. But also thanks to the inherent limitations of that incomplete and fallible communication system that we call human language, whose inevitable shortcomings and vagaries seem to bar us from definitively saying anything that could not, at least in theory, be plausibly gainsaid in that same inherently malleable language.

These limitations of human language contrast tellingly, however, with the vivid experiential convictions about reality that are communicated by substance use according to the trip reports of the psychonauts of all ages. We can debate the ontological significance of such experiences, of course, but let us remember that it was precisely such "use" that opened James' mind to a world of potential realities of whose existence he had previously been blissfully unaware. Why? Because of his previous self-satisfied acceptance of materialist principles.

Unfortunately, modern philosophers have ceded their job of metaphysical investigation to psychonauts like James Fadiman, Alex Gibbons and Jim Hogshire. Not that there is anything wrong with the research of these latter truth seekers, but it is a shame that philosophers are not working with them to promote human progress and philosophical understanding. And so if metaphysics is dead in the 21st century, it is because today's philosophers have abandoned the pursuit of truth in the name of supporting America's hateful and superstitious war on psychoactive substances.

According to Kant, we can know nothing about the noumenal world, or ultimate reality, but this claim is not true*. In making that claim, Kant was unaware of the metaphysical insights provided by psychoactive drug use. There is such a thing as "experiential proof" inspired by such use -- an absolute conviction that is felt "in every fiber of one's being," as opposed to having been "proven" for one syllogistically in the fallible and eternally insufficient communication method that we call human language.

This is Kant's Holy Grail, had he only realized it, a way to move forward with metaphysical research: by looking for experiential proof of ultimate realities rather than merely logical ones.

A critic might say, yes, but metaphysics cannot be based on experience. But by that word, one has always meant sober experience. That implicit qualification was itself established before we understood the fallibility of the senses. The transcendent experience I reference here is of another kind, being contemplated in the mind and not processed through the sense organs typically associated with experience.

*Kant's claim could be salvaged, perhaps, by specifying the type of "knowledge" that we're talking about here. My point is simply that Kant seemed unaware of the power of psychoactive drugs to inspire states that provide us with convictions with respect to the noumenal world. Whether the source of those convictions is "knowledge" properly so-called is an interesting question, but one well beyond the scope of these comments and unnecessary for their rational evaluation.

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  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    "In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud

    Materialist puritans do not want to create any drug that elates. So they go on a fool's errand to find reductionist cures for "depression itself," as if the vast array of human sadness could (or should) be treated with a one-size-fits-all readjustment of brain chemicals.

    In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.

    "The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals." -- Aleister Crowley on drug laws

    All drugs have positive uses. It's absurd to prohibit using them because one demographic might misuse them.

    I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.

    Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that prohibition is wrong.

    The drug war controls the very way that we are allowed to see the world. The Drug War is thus a meta-injustice, not just a handful of bad legal statutes.

    A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.

    Psychiatrists prescribe drugs that muck about with a patient's biochemical baseline, making them chemically dependent and turning them into patients for life.


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    Legalizing Opiates
    God and Drugs


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