# Psychedelic Paper draft ### [[Introduction This]] paper explores [[the relationship between]] [[aesthetic experience]] and [[psychedelic experience]]. Intuitions might pull either way here. On the one hand, people who have taken psychedelics will very often speak about their experiences in aesthetic terms. On the other one might place LSD, magic mushrooms, in the 'mindless hedonism' category: tripping is not, in and of itself, aesthetic, in the same way that getting drunk is not, in and of itself, aesthetic. A sceptic might try to make their complaints more acute by asking us to consider two connected questions. First, what are [[the objects]] of an aesthetic [[psychedelic experience]]? We typically think of the targets of [[aesthetic appreciation]] as shareable (you and I can both appreciate the same painting or landscape, for example). But psychedelic experiences vary considerably across individuals and occurrences. Neither does it seem plausible to say that [[the objects]] of appreciation are the psychedelic artifacts themselves: the perceivable properties of a tab of acid (size, shape, taste) are not that much different to a postage stamp. This leads directly to the second difficult question: how do we appreciate whatever it is we are appreciating? - [talk about perceptual models of [[aesthetic appreciation]], attention etc.] 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 Letheby’s recent account of psychedelic experiences in terms of [[Predictive Processing]]. In Section 2, we will show 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 mind’s. 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 the same mental structure. In Part 2, we will provide an account of how we should understand aesthetic appreciation of one’s own mental structure. ## Part 1 ### 1. Psychedelic Experience as Mind Revealing - Let us begin by refining what we mean by psychedelic. - Lyon (2024) suggests we start with etymology and go from there: The term ‘psychedelic’ derives from the ancient Greek words psychē (mind/soul) and dēlos (revealed/manifest) and means mind- revealing.􏰁 Accordingly, a psychedelic experience is a mind-revealing experience. It is an experience in which hidden parts or aspects of your mind are revealed and become manifest in your consciousness. - This definition distinguishes psychedelic experience from run of the mill inebriation (drunkenness etc.)[^1], as well as mere hallucinatory states –tinnitus leads to the hallucination of a high pitched ringing, but reveals nothing to the sufferer about their mind. - We should also note that this revelation or manifestation of the mind is experiential: concluding from a psychology textbook that one harbours unconscious biases is not psychedelic because this knowledge about one's own mind is inferred from than experienced. - say that the following is ostensive - According to Lyon, experiential awareness of one's mind is not uncommon in everyday life. - Illustrations include: - Emotional Insights: - Suddenly realising one has been attracted to someone for a long time without consciously acknowledging it - Long-Lost Memories: - Classic instances: a smell triggering a vivid recollection of childhood. - Tip-of-the-Tongue Retrieval: - The sudden appearance of a word or name that was frustratingly just beyond recall. - The flash of recall itself is the brief but tangible revealing event. - Creative Realisations: - A new idea surges into one’s conscious mind “out of nowhere,” though likely prepared unconsciously. - Visual System Processes: - In illusions like illusory motion (seeing motion in a static image), some hidden aspect of the brain’s predictive or interpretive processes is glimpsed. - Not all illusions qualify; illusions requiring measurement or external confirmation rely more on inference. - Perspective Shifts (e.g., “Zooming Out”): - Observing one’s problems from a removed vantage, thereby exposing previously unrecognised life priorities or illusions. - We are most interested in perceptual or cognitive systems being made manifest: - Quotes from Lyon: #### A completely different class of examples involves our visual system. The popular view of vision is that it starts by light reflecting off objects and hitting our eyes, which then convert that light into a neural signal, which then is processed by the brain, resulting in the visual experience of the objects before us. However, cognitive science paints a rather different picture: roughly speaking, the mind proactively creates visual scenes it thinks are likely to be real (or useful) and then checks to see if this matches the incoming signals from the eyes.31 We typically don’t notice this process because the visual system works smoothly and does an adequate job of showing the world in front of us. However, we can get glimpses of the process by putting it in unusual situations that evolution didn’t optimize for—such as closing one’s eyes in a pitch-black room for an extended period of time. For many people, intricate geometric patterns of colour eventually emerge from the initially dark visual scene. In Chapter 7, I’ll argue that these patterns are the result of the visual system actively trying to find low-level visual features, such as edges, colours, contours, motion, and so on. In such cases, we get a glimpse of the processes that create our everyday visual scenes. These glimpses are psychedelic experiences. #### Nevertheless, it is useful to think about the basic idea using different terminology: roughly speaking, the experiences of geometric patterns seem hallucinatory, but they are actually the revelation of the visual system’s building blocks—or raw ingredients—that it uses to construct our visual experience of the world. We are not aware of them under normal circumstances, as that would interfere with their purpose, but, under the right conditions, and especially with the help of psychedelics, they can be revealed to us in experience. - In short, Lyon provides us with a more refined definition of psychedelic, one on which they are not simply conflated with simply with 'weird' experiences. To be psychedelic, experience must be revelatory of our own minds ### 2. Partial Opacity and the Mind as an Aesthetic Object - The following draws on Metzinger for the opacity and Letheby for the psychedelic experience as predictive processing. Psychedelics can make aspects of our mental processes opaque, so that individuals become aware/recognise their perceptions, thoughts etc. as constructed. In normal life we do not often experience our internal models as models; the generative processes that undergird experience are “transparent”. Letheby highlights the epistemological dimension of such experiences: by unveiling the constructive nature of perception and self-representation, psychedelics may foster insights into how the brain “paints” reality onto the mind’s canvas. Importantly, if one’s generative processes become salient in this way, they may be shared—at least in part—insofar as others possess the same underlying predictive architecture and can report correspondingly similar experiences. Although each psychedelic state is personal, individuals can often relate to the unifying notion that perception and selfhood, under the influence of psychedelics, are actively constructed, in flux, and therefore potentially amenable to new ways of appreciating or understanding them. This contributes to the suggestion in Part 1 that an aesthetic appreciation of psychedelic experience might primarily focus on the structure of the mind itself. The self-binding function that usually remains transparent becomes partially undone, enabling a direct encounter with the mind’s creative or even “artful” processes. Under psychedelics, people sometimes describe “watching” the intricate interplay of top-down expectations and bottom-up errors, witnessing how emotional states, body feelings, and sensory impressions interact in real time. Such a stance—akin to seeing “behind the scenes” of an artwork—situates the mind’s own generative strategies as the aesthetic object. Hence, while predictive processing theorists have typically emphasised the adaptive functions of hierarchical inference, Letheby’s work integrates this with a phenomenological account that underscores the sheer experiential dimension of having these processes revealed. In line with the Epistemology chapter of his work, one might argue that psychedelic opacity not only offers fresh insight into perception and self-construction but also frames them as something that can be admired, explored, or reflected upon aesthetically. This supports the paper’s overall argument that, amidst the usual difficulty of identifying the proper aesthetic “object” of a psychedelic experience, it is the partially unmasked mind—rendered newly accessible and shareable—that takes centre stage. ### 3. Psychedelic Experience, Opacity and Predictive Processing - The above is at least suggestive as to what the object of psychedelic aesthetics might be: if psychedelic experiences reveal the mind, then, perhaps, that is what we appreciate. - However, it seems we are a long way from an understanding of psychedelic experiences with which we can make sense of their being aesthetic. - [one more sentence relating back to the previous section] - The following two sections will add nuance to this idea by detailing two other ideas: predictive processing and opacity. Predictive processing accounts regard the mind as a hierarchical inference engine seeking to minimise the gap between its predictions and incoming sensory data, sometimes described as generating “controlled hallucinations.” In this view, the brain continuously predicts the causes of its inputs, relying on progressively abstract “priors” as one moves from lower-level perceptual details to more complex notions of self and reality. A “prediction,” in this architecture, is not a guess about the future; it is a structured hypothesis about how external or internal events will unfold, refined through mismatch signals (prediction errors). Under predictive processing cognition proceeds hierarchically: lower levels encode sensory details (e.g., edges, colours), while higher levels encode abstract priors (e.g., “I exist,” “time flows linearly”). These priors shape experience by binding disparate inputs (perceptual, interoceptive, proprioceptive) into coherent, subject-centred narratives—what Letheby refers to as “predictive self-binding”. Typically, these high-level priors operate transparently, producing perceptions and beliefs without being noticed as representations. We see a chair, for example, rather than a ‘prediction of a chair.’ Higher priors reflect deeper assumptions—beliefs about personal identity, the unity of space and time, or base-level assumptions about external objects and causality. According to Letheby, psychedelics relax these high-level priors, thus reducing the brain’s accustomed confidence in how it anticipates the world—and the self—to behave. Pharmacologically, psychedelics (via 5-HT2A receptor stimulation) lower precision-weighting on entrenched priors (Carhart-Harris’ REBUS model), essentially “flattening” hierarchical gradients. With these priors loosened, the process of “self-binding” is destabilised, so the brain no longer firmly predicts a unified, enduring sense of self or a reliably stable environment. - Excellent Quote from Letheby about perceptual processes being revealed in psychedelic experience Nevertheless, it is useful to think about the basic idea using different terminology: roughly speaking, the experiences of geometric patterns seem hallucinatory, but they are actually the revelation of the visual system’s building blocks—or raw ingredients—that it uses to construct our visual experience of the world. We are not aware of them under normal circumstances, as that would interfere with their purpose, but, under the right conditions, and especially with the help of psychedelics, they can be revealed to us in experience. (p. 187) ## Part 2 - Part 1 introduces the idea that psychedelic experiences can be understood as a mind revealing, and that, therefore, a plausible move to make is to say that what is appreciated in psychedelic experience is a subject's own mind. - the aim of part 2 is show how this can be used to develop a psychedelic aesthetics. ### 4. Depiction and Design Scene Properties - It is sometimes suggested that part of the aesthetic appreciation of images is attending to (being aware of) the way in which vehicle properties realise the depictive content. - Nanay calls these as design scene properties (see below for other names) - Quote: I want to return to the specific kind of property that has played an important role in understanding the aesthetic appreciation of pictures (while acknowledging that there may be other properties that we routinely attribute to pictures when we appreciate them aesthetically). It is the property that Budd describes as ‘the crucial characteristic of pictorial art, namely, the interrelationship between the marks on the surface and what is depicted in them’ (Budd 1995, p. 58...). (p. 58) Properties of this kind (under different labels) have triggered lively discussion recently, mainly in connection with the concept of ‘inflection’ (see Podro 1991, 1998; Lopes 2005; Hopkins 2010; Nanay 2010b). Hopkins calls these properties ‘inflected properties’ and argues that ‘a full characterization of [them] needs to make reference to the surface’s design (conceived as such)’ (Hopkins 2010). I myself called them ‘design-scene properties’, where a ‘design-scene property’ is a ‘relational property that cannot be fully characterized without reference to both the picture’s design and to the depicted object’ (Nanay 2010b, p. 194). In the light of the threefoldness account above, which resolves the ambiguity of the concept of ‘depicted object’ in this definition, I should say that a design- scene property is a relational property that cannot be fully characterized without reference to both the picture’s surface and to the three-dimensional object visually encoded in the surface. (p. 59 but check these page numbers (quotes are correct though)) - One aspect of appreciating a pictorial work of art is the awareness of (attention to) these relational properties. - Another Long quote from Nanay: A key element in any appreciation of a pictorial work of art is the awareness of design-scene properties (this is what Budd suggests when he says that ‘the interrelationship between the marks on the surface and what is depicted in them’ is ‘the crucial characteristic of pictorial art’ (Budd 1995, p. 58, the second emphasis is mine)). When we are admiring a Miró drawing and the way two simple curved lines somehow manage to depict an expressive human face, what we are attending to is exactly a design-scene property: the relational property partly determined by the shape property of the two-dimensional curved line on the canvas and partly determined by the three-dimensional depicted face. And when we are appreciating Cézanne’s landscapes, one thing that enhances our aesthetic appreciation is to see the interrelationship between the three- dimensional depicted fascicles of pine needles and the two-dimensional single brushstrokes on the canvas. What Frank Sibley would call our ‘critical and evaluative discourse’ (Sibley 1959, p. 422) is full of references to design-scene properties (from which Sibley would conclude that it is an aesthetic property—see Chapter 4): to the way the depicted object emerges from the marks on the surface or to the way the depicted object is represented by the marks on the surface. (Nanay 2017, pp. 59 - 60) ### Shareable Objects? - Design Scene Properties are shareable in that two observers can attend to and discuss how the same mark on a Miró realises a face - The concept is used to illustrate the broader point that aesthetic experience is not solely about the detection of isolated properties (such as colour or form) but about apprehending the integrated, relational structure of the artwork. - Arguably, perceiving this realisation relation is something that renders an experience distinctly aesthetic rather than merely utilitarian or purely perceptual. - Nanay defines design‐scene properties as relational properties that cannot be fully characterised without reference to both of the following components: - The Picture’s Surface (A): - This is the two‐dimensional physical medium on which the artwork is rendered. - The Three‐Dimensional Object Visually Encoded in the Surface (B): - This is the perceptual construct that arises from the pictorial cues provided by the surface. - In effect, a design‐scene property is one whose full description requires an account of the interrelationship between the physical marks on the surface and the emergent three‐dimensional structure. Attention and Realisation (maybe this can be left out) - Nanay argues that a significant case of aesthetic experience depends on the observer’s capacity to attend to design‐scene properties. - This capacity is related to the notion of “distributed aesthetic attention,” which is defined as the manner in which one’s attention is: - Focused on a single perceptual object (or picture) and simultaneously - Distributed over a variety of its properties, including those that belong to both the surface and the visually encoded three‐dimensional object. - When an observer appreciates a picture aesthetically, their attention is not exclusively fixed on either the surface (A) or solely on the encoded three‐dimensional object (B). - Instead, the observer’s attention is deployed in a distributed manner so as to capture the relational properties—that is, the design‐scene properties—which emerge from the interaction between the surface and the depicted content. - This attentional mode is presented as distinctive in the aesthetic domain, differing from the more utilitarian or non‐aesthetic modes of attention that may focus on a limited set of properties or on a broader array of objects without a similar integrative focus. - Design‐scene properties serve to link the perceptual act (the way we see the picture) with the evaluative act (the way we appreciate it aesthetically). - By attending to these relational properties, the observer is able to: - Appreciate how the physical execution of the artwork (its design or marks) gives rise to an impression of a three‐dimensional scene. - Assess qualities such as naturalism, expressiveness, or the accuracy of the representation. ### 5. Psychedelic Aesthetics This section is nowhere near finished. We now have enough conceptual machinery on the workbench to put forward our positive account. The 'pocket-sized' version of our view is as follows: Psychedelic opacity allows for a subject to become aware of something analogous design-scene properties for their own mental processes. ### From Design-Scene Properties to Realisational Properties In earlier sections, we encountered how Nanay’s ‘design-scene properties’ help us understand the aesthetic appreciation of images: one attends to the marks on the surface (the “design”) and the three-dimensional content they depict (the “scene”), noticing the interplay that makes an artwork shareable and appreciable. Drawing on this analogy for psychedelic experience, we can regard the mind’s internal processes—the predictive structures that generate conscious experience—as a kind of ‘design.’ The resulting perceptual and cognitive contents—the ‘scene’—are thus realised or constructed by these neural processes. What were previously called ‘design-scene properties’ can now be recast as realisational properties: relational features that cannot be fully understood without referencing both the generative processes (the mind’s ‘marks’) and their resulting representations (the experiential ‘scene’). Just as two people may both attend to the same surface-shapes in a Miró painting and talk about the face they evoke, psychedelic users may attend to their own mental ‘marks,’ sharing discussions about how a sense of unity, time dilation, or altered perception emerges from the loosening of various predictive constraints. In normal circumstances, these processes remain transparent: an individual perceives the world, or an artwork, without noticing the constant inferring, integrating, and ‘filling-in’ that underpins perception. Nanay highlights how an essential part of aesthetic appreciation involves this heightened awareness of the relational properties between surface and scene. Analogously, under psychedelics, one may explicitly notice the ‘marks’ of the mind—changes in attention, shifts in interpretive bias, unusual emotional surges—and observe them coalescing into a distinctive experiential ‘scene.’ This notion has broad implications for the shareability of psychedelic experience: if the underlying predictive mechanisms of the brain are broadly similar in all humans, then at least some realisational properties are comparable across individuals, making them viable as aesthetic objects that we can discuss. ### Metzinger’s Transparency, Partial Opacity, and Predictive Processing In earlier discussion, we saw how Metzinger’s concept of transparency explains why we usually remain unaware of the constructive nature of our experiences, taking them as direct contacts with reality. Psychedelics can expose this hidden scaffolding by inducing partial opacity: one notices that the world, as experienced, is a model. This newly visible structure is reminiscent of illusions like ‘illusory motion’ or the ‘hollow mask,’ discussed in Part 1, where we realise that our perceptual system’s inferences can contradict direct sensory evidence or logic. Under psychedelics, the same principle is magnified. If certain high-level priors (e.g., about the stability of space, the continuity of self, or the solidity of objects) are temporarily ‘relaxed,’ the individual may see the ‘marks’—the generative processes—and so become aware of how their mind ‘paints’ reality. Predictive processing offers a valuable framework for explaining how these illusions arise: the brain continuously attempts to minimise errors by matching sensory input with prior expectations. Often, these priors prevent us from noticing the mind’s role in shaping experience. Under the normal regime, a system invests high confidence in foundational assumptions—such as the continuity of time or the reliability of a singular self. Psychedelics reduce this confidence, rendering these priors less rigid. This allows unusual content—breathing walls, synaesthetic intermingling of senses, or illusions of cosmic unity—to surface. Crucially, it also grants the user an opportunity to attend to the mechanisms themselves. Thus, the normally transparent scaffolding becomes partially opaque, reinforcing Metzinger’s claim that our experiences are more akin to internal models than direct mirrors of the world. ### Objection 1: “There Is No Designer” One might argue that appreciating a painting’s surface-scene properties presupposes an actual artist. By parallel reasoning, someone might question how realisational properties of the mind can be ‘appreciated’ if no conscious ‘designer’ orchestrates them. Yet, as we saw in discussions of illusions—like seeing faces in clouds—no intentional agent is required. The ‘design’ here is the product of the mind’s generative or predictive processes, which shape experience in ways that can be compellingly reminiscent of artistic design. Perceivers can find ‘beauty’ or structural elegance in these accidental cloud-shapes without presupposing a painterly intention. Similarly, psychedelic experiences expose the layered processes of the predictive brain, which can be engaged with aesthetically even though there is no homunculus or external agent designing the scene. The structures themselves, once partly unveiled, become the object of reflective appreciation. ### (4) Revisiting Opacity, Aesthetic Objecthood, and Nanay’s Insight Nanay suggests that attention to design-scene properties is a defining feature of pictorial art appreciation. Transposed to psychedelic experience, an analogous focus on mental ‘design-scene’ or realisational properties transforms the mind into a potential aesthetic object. An individual not only perceives external content—colours, patterns, or illusions—but also how those contents are generated by dynamic predictive loops. This matches earlier claims in Part 1 that, under psychedelics, the mind becomes ‘partially unmasked’ so that users can observe the interplay of top-down expectations and bottom-up errors. This interplay yields illusions—sometimes fleeting, sometimes profound—that highlight the constructive nature of perception. Noticing the correlation between mental ‘marks’ (altered priors) and emergent ‘scenes’ (hallucinatory images, novel insights, feelings of unity) recasts one’s self-awareness as an aesthetic phenomenon. Crucially, because many of these illusions, such as subtle shifts in the perception of motion or changes in colour hue, remain grounded in widely shared neurobiological processes, psychedelic aesthetics can be partially shareable. Two participants might discuss how they both perceived their surroundings as ‘breathing,’ linking it to high-level priors relaxing in the visual system. They can compare the resulting emotional or conceptual revelations—akin to two people discussing how a small brushstroke in a Cézanne painting gives rise to an entire landscape. The ‘realisational’ emphasis clarifies why the opaque mind is worth aesthetic consideration: it exhibits complex, layered ‘design-scene’ features—without presupposing an artist—that underwrite an engaging, shareable aesthetic domain. ### (5) Predictive Processing, the Homunculus Fallacy, and Letheby’s Account A second potential criticism is whether focusing on these higher-order predictive processes implies a ‘little observer’ detecting them. This might seem akin to a homunculus peering at internal illusions. However, as Letheby argues in his extension of predictive processing approaches, the self itself emerges from the interplay of hierarchical inferences; there is no discrete observer. These inferences operate in a decentralised manner, constantly updating predictions at multiple levels—ranging from low-level sensory processing to high-level conceptions of identity or personal narrative. Under psychedelics, confidence in certain rigid priors can weaken, creating a distinctive view of these processes. Far from showing a homunculus, it dissolves the notion of a stable internal spectator, instead revealing that the ‘I’ we typically take for granted may be yet another construct shaped by top-down and bottom-up loops. This resonates with Metzinger’s portrayal of the ‘phenomenal self-model’ as transparent under normal conditions and newly opaque under psychedelics. The illusions of cohesive identity and unwavering worldview become visible as illusions (or partial illusions)—akin to illusions requiring measurement or attention to confirm their constructed nature. Moreover, Letheby’s account highlights that this unmasking can have epistemic and therapeutic benefits. People sometimes report feeling liberated from outmoded self-narratives or discovering hidden aspects of their personality. From an aesthetic standpoint, observing these generative processes as they unfold can be compared to glimpsing ‘behind the scenes’ of an artwork, refining or transforming one’s appreciation of one’s own mental life. Thus, the ‘mind-as-aesthetic-object’ view becomes plausible if we accept the radical but well-supported insight that there is no internal observer but rather a system of inferential processes generating both illusions and disclosures alike. [^1]: Lyon describes drunkenness as "psychocryptic" (REF). Such experiences hide or suppress aspects of the mind: anger, intoxication, or brain fog reduce clarity and remove access. # OLD VERSION- Psychedelic Aesthetics ## Introduction This paper explores the relationship between aesthetic experience and psychedelic experience. Intuitions might pull either way here. On the one hand, people who have taken psychedelics will very often speak about their experiences in aesthetic terms. On the other one might place LSD, magic mushrooms, in the 'mindless hedonism' category: tripping is not, in and of itself, aesthetic, in the same way that getting drunk is not, in and of itself, aesthetic.  A sceptic might try to make their complaints more acute by asking us to consider two interrelated questions. First, what are the objects of an aesthetic psychedelic experience? We typically think of the targets of aesthetic appreciation as shareable (you and I can both appreciate the same painting or landscape, for example). But psychedelic experiences vary considerably across individuals and occurrences. Neither does it seem plausible to say that the objects of appreciation are the psychedelic articles themselves: the perceivable properties of a tab of acid (size, shape, taste) are not that much different to a postage stamp.  This leads directly to the second difficult question: how do we appreciate whatever it is we are appreciating?  - [talk about perceptual models of aesthetic appreciation, attention etc.] 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 Letheby’s recent account of psychedelic experiences in terms of Predictive Processing. In Section 2, we will show 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 mind’s. 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 the same mental structure.  In Part 2, we will provide an account of how we should understand aesthetic appreciation of one’s own mental structure.  # Part 1 ## 1. Psychedelic Experience as Mind Revealing The following draws heavily on Lyon (2024) Basic Definition - A psychedelic experience is one in which something ordinarily hidden from a person’s awareness becomes manifest, in experience rather than by inference. - For example, reading in a textbook that one might harbour unconscious biases is not a psychedelic experience; the actual “aha!” moment of experiencing the bias in real time would be. Concrete Illustrations - Emotional Insights: - Suddenly realising one has been attracted to someone for a long time without consciously acknowledging it. - The essence is direct experiential recognition, not a rational deduction. - Long-Lost Memories: - Classic instances: a smell triggering a vivid recollection of childhood. - Psychedelics are often reported to revive early traumas or nostalgic memories inaccessible by ordinary means. - Tip-of-the-Tongue Retrieval: - The sudden appearance of a word or name that was frustratingly just beyond recall. - The flash of recall itself is the brief but tangible revealing event. - Creative Realisations: - A new idea surges into one’s conscious mind “out of nowhere,” though likely prepared unconsciously. - Visual System Processes: - In illusions like illusory motion (seeing motion in a static image), some hidden aspect of the brain’s predictive or interpretive processes is glimpsed. - Not all illusions qualify; illusions requiring measurement or external confirmation rely more on inference. - Perspective Shifts (e.g., “Zooming Out”): - Observing one’s problems from a removed vantage, thereby exposing previously unrecognised life priorities or illusions. Opposite: Psychecryptic Experiences - Psychecryptic derives from psychē and kryptos (to hide). - Such experiences hide or suppress aspects of the mind: anger, intoxication, or brain fog reduce clarity and remove access. - One can shift between states that are simultaneously psychedelic in one respect and psychecryptic in another (e.g., binocular rivalry: revealing one percept while hiding the other). Not Merely “Weird” or “Intense” - The author stresses that “psychedelic” must not be conflated with “bizarre” or “outlandish.” - It is about revelation, not simply strangeness. Some intense states might contain little genuine insight, whereas a mundane flash of recollection could be distinctly mind-revealing. ## 2. Psychedelic Experience and Predictive Processing We begin by presenting a recent characterisation of psychedelic experience proposed by Letheby, who situates psychedelics within the predictive processing framework. Predictive processing accounts regard the mind as a hierarchical inference engine seeking to minimise the gap between its predictions and incoming sensory data, sometimes described as generating “controlled hallucinations.” In this view, the brain continuously predicts the causes of its inputs, relying on progressively abstract “priors” as one moves from lower-level perceptual details to more complex notions of self and reality. A “prediction,” in this architecture, is not a guess about the future; it is a structured hypothesis about how external or internal events will unfold, refined through mismatch signals (prediction errors). Under predictive processing cognition proceeds hierarchically: lower levels encode sensory details (e.g., edges, colours), while higher levels encode abstract priors (e.g., “I exist,” “time flows linearly”). These priors shape experience by binding disparate inputs (perceptual, interoceptive, proprioceptive) into coherent, subject-centred narratives—what Letheby refers to as “predictive self-binding”. Typically, these high-level priors operate transparently, producing perceptions and beliefs without being noticed as representations. We see a chair, for example, rather than a ‘prediction of a chair.’ Higher priors reflect deeper assumptions—beliefs about personal identity, the unity of space and time, or base-level assumptions about external objects and causality. According to Letheby, psychedelics relax these high-level priors, thus reducing the brain’s accustomed confidence in how it anticipates the world—and the self—to behave. Pharmacologically, psychedelics (via 5-HT2A receptor stimulation) lower precision-weighting on entrenched priors (Carhart-Harris’ REBUS model), essentially “flattening” hierarchical gradients. With these priors loosened, the process of “self-binding” is destabilised, so the brain no longer firmly predicts a unified, enduring sense of self or a reliably stable environment. ## 2. Partial Opacity and the Mind as an Aesthetic Object Psychedelics can make aspects of our mental processes opaque, so that individuals become aware/recognise their perceptions, thoughts etc. as constructed. In normal life we do not often experience our internal models as models; the generative processes that undergird experience are “transparent”.  In aesthetic terms, this partial opacity can transform the mind’s processes into an object of appreciation. Rather than appreciating only the external environment or an artwork, the user might aesthetically engage with the patterns of their own cognition—observing how shifting priors, loosened categories, or surprise-laden inferences spark unpredictable visuals, emotional surges, or conceptual breakthroughs. Letheby highlights the epistemological dimension of such experiences: by unveiling the constructive nature of perception and self-representation, psychedelics may foster insights into how the brain “paints” reality onto the mind’s canvas. Importantly, if one’s generative processes become salient in this way, they may be shared—at least in part—insofar as others possess the same underlying predictive architecture and can report correspondingly similar experiences. Although each psychedelic state is personal, individuals can often relate to the unifying notion that perception and selfhood, under the influence of psychedelics, are actively constructed, in flux, and therefore potentially amenable to new ways of appreciating or understanding them. This contributes to the suggestion in Part 1 that an aesthetic appreciation of psychedelic experience might primarily focus on the structure of the mind itself. The self-binding function that usually remains transparent becomes partially undone, enabling a direct encounter with the mind’s creative or even “artful” processes. Under psychedelics, people sometimes describe “watching” the intricate interplay of top-down expectations and bottom-up errors, witnessing how emotional states, body feelings, and sensory impressions interact in real time. Such a stance—akin to seeing “behind the scenes” of an artwork—situates the mind’s own generative strategies as the aesthetic object. Hence, while predictive processing theorists have typically emphasised the adaptive functions of hierarchical inference, Letheby’s work integrates this with a phenomenological account that underscores the sheer experiential dimension of having these processes revealed. In line with the Epistemology chapter of his work, one might argue that psychedelic opacity not only offers fresh insight into perception and self-construction but also frames them as something that can be admired, explored, or reflected upon aesthetically. This supports the paper’s overall argument that, amidst the usual difficulty of identifying the proper aesthetic “object” of a psychedelic experience, it is the partially unmasked mind—rendered newly accessible and shareable—that takes centre stage. # Part 2 - part 1 introduces the idea that psychedelic experiences can be understood as mind revealing states - mental processes (of different types) are made opaque - the aim of part 2 is show how this can be used to develop a psychedelic aesthetics. Realisational Properties - It is sometimes suggested that part of the aesthetic appreciation of images is attending to (being aware of) the way in which vehicle properties realise the depictive content. - Nanay calls these as design scene properties (see below for other names) - Quote I want to return to the specific kind of property that has played an important role in understanding the aesthetic appreciation of pictures (while acknowledging that there may be other properties that we rou- tinely attribute to pictures when we appreciate them aesthetically). It is the property that Budd describes as ‘the crucial characteristic of pictorial art, namely, the interrelationship between the marks on the surface and what is depicted in them’ (Budd 1995, p. 58...). (p. 58) Properties of this kind (under different labels) have triggered lively discussion recently, mainly in connection with the concept of ‘inflection’ (see Podro 1991, 1998; Lopes 2005; Hopkins 2010; Nanay 2010b). Hopkins calls these properties ‘inflected properties’ and argues that ‘a full characterization of [them] needs to make reference to the surface’s design (conceived as such)’ (Hopkins 2010). I myself called them ‘design-scene properties’, where a ‘design-scene property’ is a ‘relational property that cannot be fully characterized without reference to both the picture’s design and to the depicted object’ (Nanay 2010b, p. 194). In the light of the threefoldness account above, which resolves the ambiguity of the concept of ‘depicted object’ in this definition, I should say that a design- scene property is a relational property that cannot be fully characterized without reference to both the picture’s surface and to the three-dimensional object visually encoded in the surface. (p. 59 but check these page numbers (quotes are crrect though)) Design Scene Properties in Aesthetic Appreciation - One aspect of appreciating a pictorial work of art is the awareness of (attention to) these relational properties. - Quote from Nanay: A key element in any appreciation of a pictorial work of art is the awareness of design-scene properties (this is what Budd suggests when he says that ‘the interrelationship between the marks on the surface and what is depicted in them’ is ‘the crucial characteristic of pictorial art’ (Budd 1995, p. 58, the second emphasis is mine)). When we are admiring a Miró drawing and the way two simple curved lines somehow manage to depict an expressive human face, what we are attending to is exactly a design-scene property: the relational property partly determined by the shape property of the two-dimensional curved line on the canvas and partly determined by the three-dimensional depicted face. And when we are appreciating Cézanne’s landscapes, one thing that enhances our aesthetic appreciation is to see the interrelationship between the three- dimensional depicted fascicles of pine needles and the two-dimensional single brushstrokes on the canvas. What Frank Sibley would call our ‘critical and evaluative discourse’ (Sibley 1959, p. 422) is full of references to design-scene properties (from which Sibley would conclude that it is an aesthetic property—see Chapter 4): to the way the depicted object emerges from the marks on the surface or to the way the depicted object is represented by the marks on the surface. (Nanay 2017, pp. 59 - 60) - Design Scene Properties are shareable in that two observers can attend to and discuss how the same mark on a Miró realises a face - The concept is used to illustrate the broader point that aesthetic experience is not solely about the detection of isolated properties (such as colour or form) but about apprehending the integrated, relational structure of the artwork. - Arguably, perceiving this realisation relation is something that renders an experience distinctly aesthetic rather than merely utilitarian or purely perceptual. - The author defines design‐scene properties as relational properties that cannot be fully characterised without reference to both of the following components: - The Picture’s Surface (A): - This is the two‐dimensional physical medium on which the artwork is rendered. - The Three‐Dimensional Object Visually Encoded in the Surface (B): - This is the perceptual construct that arises from the pictorial cues provided by the surface. - In effect, a design‐scene property is one whose full description requires an account of the interrelationship between the physical marks on the surface and the emergent three‐dimensional structure. Attention and Realisation (maybe this can be left out) - A Central Feature of Aesthetic Experience - The author argues that a significant case of aesthetic experience—particularly in the context of pictorial art—depends on the observer’s capacity to attend to design‐scene properties. - This capacity is related to the notion of “distributed aesthetic attention,” which is defined as the manner in which one’s attention is: - Focused on a single perceptual object (or picture) and simultaneously - Distributed over a variety of its properties, including those that belong to both the surface and the visually encoded three‐dimensional object. - Role in Distributed Aesthetic Attention - When an observer appreciates a picture aesthetically, their attention is not exclusively fixed on either the surface (A) or solely on the encoded three‐dimensional object (B). - Instead, the observer’s attention is deployed in a distributed manner so as to capture the relational properties—that is, the design‐scene properties—which emerge from the interaction between the surface and the depicted content. - This attentional mode is presented as distinctive in the aesthetic domain, differing from the more utilitarian or non‐aesthetic modes of attention that may focus on a limited set of properties or on a broader array of objects without a similar integrative focus. - Bridging Perception and Evaluation - Design‐scene properties serve to link the perceptual act (the way we see the picture) with the evaluative act (the way we appreciate it aesthetically). - By attending to these relational properties, the observer is able to: - Appreciate how the physical execution of the artwork (its design or marks) gives rise to an impression of a three‐dimensional scene. - Assess qualities such as naturalism, expressiveness, or the accuracy of the representation. - In this respect, the notion of design‐scene properties provides the conceptual resources needed for articulating why certain aesthetic experiences have a lasting or transformative effect. ### 4. Psychedelic Aesthetics - We now have enough conceptual machinery to put forward our positive account. - In short, we suggest that psychedelic opacity allows for a subject to become aware of something analogous design-scene properties for their own mental processes.  - We saw above that... - things like Visual System Processes become opaque - - -  about their own mind: the “design” corresponds to neural or psychological vehicles (e.g., shifting priors, loosened constraints, top-down inferences), while the “scene” or content is the conscious representation (e.g., the resulting imagery, emotional states, or ideas). As the paper puts it, “Psychedelics can make aspects of our mental processes opaque … transforming them into an object of appreciation.” Attending to the interplay between how the content is generated (the vehicle) and the content itself mirrors the aesthetic stance Nanay describes for pictorial art. - - In adapting Nanay’s approach to psychedelic aesthetics, the concept of design scene properties—relational features dependent on both a pictorial surface and the three-dimensional scene it encodes—becomes more illuminating when placed in dialogue with Metzinger’s theory of transparency and the predictive processing framework. As outlined earlier, Metzinger (2014, p. 123) notes that “transparency . . . refers to a property of conscious representations, namely, that they are not experienced as representations. . . . Transparent conscious representations create the phenomenology of naïve realism.” In usual perception, therefore, we look “through” our mental constructions, failing to notice that we are implicitly interpreting rather than passively receiving external reality. This conceptual footing already suggests a parallel to Nanay: aesthetic engagement with pictures involves attending to how surface marks give rise to a depicted object. Likewise, to appreciate one’s own mental states, we need to see them “as representations”—that is, to experience them in a more “opaque” mode, rather than looking through them. ** ![[attachments/Promemoria Notification Feb 12 2025.pdf]] [Preview attachment Elenco_NRE.pdf ![[attachments/Promemoria Notification Feb 12 2025 (1).pdf]]