```dataview TABLE file.link AS "Note", file.cday AS "Created On" WHERE file.cday = date(this.file.name) SORT file.cday ASC ``` # Plan for psychedelics paper 1. Introduction: Psychedelics are artifacts that generate perceptual experiences.  Pictures are paradigmatic artifacts of this sort.  Pictures can be appreciated aesthetically both for the scenes they enable us to perceive and the peculiar way in which they enable us to perceive those, and for [[the design]] from which those scenes emerge ([[design scene properties]]).  2. Perhaps the same is true for psychedelics - 2 and 3 as problems: Can we have a  scene aesthetics and a [[design aesthetics]] of psychedelics?  - 2: psychedelics are like a lens, they enhance [[aesthetic experience]], nothing more. (profound transparency) - 3: there is not such thing as [[design scene properties]] of experience - In this paper we are going to show how trhiese challenges can be met. - In order to show this, we will use [[predictive processing]] framework.  Introduction to PP - predictive errors (bottom-up)  - priors (top-down) - minimisation  - introspection - attention/precision [[PREDICTIVE PROCESSING]] HERE? 3. Scene-oriented Aesthetics: Psychedelics can surely be appreciated for the the scenes they enables us to perceive and the peculiar way in which they enable us to perceive those: intensification, alteration, novelty, and self-minimization and relaxation of priors (space, time, causality, for-me-ness).even if you don’t care about design... you can have an [[aesthetic experience]] of the content 4. you see something beautiful (perceptual surrogate in the case of photos)– there  is no beauty in the picture it is only a surrogate of an object. (Scruton: no aesthetics of photography)  5. There is a picture that makes me see a beautiful unicorn; the painting is beautiful by virtue of this. The aesthetic merit of the picture is inherited from what is depicted.(ALTERATION AND NOVELTY) 6. The way that something (whether real or imaginary) seen in a picture 7. as still/, as non-egocentrically located, framed –we can  - what is the pictorial analog of the relaxation of priors? (RELAXATION OF PRIORS) to see things in a different way. -  the kind of experience that the picture elicits seems to involve a perception in which priors are no longer in play.  - images elicit an experience as if priors are relaxed. - the experiential relation to the scene is different from ordinary perception.  - [[Design Properties]]: But can psychedelics be appreciated also for their design-scene properties? There seem to  be no relevant design features in the psychedelic vehicle. Yet we can aesthetically appreciate design-scene properties if we shift the focus from the psychedelic vehicle to the mental vehicle. The right place where to look for design features in [[psychedelic experience]] is the mind itself.** # enrico's paragraph On the one hand, it might be interesting to compare psychedelic artifacts to pictures since they both are “[[experiential artifacts]]” that have the function of eliciting peculiar perceptual or at least perception-like experiences. On the other hand, pictures such as drawings and paintings elicit such experiences in virtue of the configuration of colored marks on their surfaces. The viewers of a painting can enjoy a shareable [[perceptual experience]] of both the configuration and the scene depicted, which grounds their [[aesthetic appreciation]] of the painting. The user of psychedelic artifacts, by contrast, does not gain any aesthetic benefit from the shareable perceptual exploration of the artifact while she surely enjoys the [[perceptual experience]] generated by the artifact but finds it hard to share it with others.  Here we will offer an answer to both questions, thereby clarifying [[the relationship between]] aesthetic and psychedelic experience. Our plan will be as follows. In Section 1, we will put forward a predictive processing account of psychedelic experiences, drawing on Letheby's recent work. In Section 2, we will explain how an idea contained in this approach, opacity, provides us with a potential object of aesthetic appreciation: psychedelic experiences allow us to appreciate the structure of our own minds. We will end by arguing that although it is not possible for someone to appreciate another's mind directly, psychedelic experience allows for access, and thereby appreciation of shared mental structures. **