# The Image Analogy: A Starting Point Having explored how psychedelics might enhance appreciation of other [[aesthetic objects]], we now turn to a more ambitious claim: psychedelic experiences themselves can be objects of [[aesthetic appreciation]]. Specifically, we suggest that psychedelic experiences might be aesthetically appreciated in ways similar to how we appreciate paintings and other images. ## Image Content and Psychedelic Content One straightforward way we appreciate pictures is through their depicting beautiful content. A painting might depict a stunning landscape, a serene valley, or portray a great beauty. The image serves as a window to something that would be beautiful if encountered directly. In this case, what we appreciate is primarily the depictive content rather than the medium itself. Psychedelic experiences, particularly those induced by substances like DMT (give other examples), often present similarly beautiful content. Users frequently report visions of: - Elaborate geometric patterns with vibrant colours - Fantastical landscapes of impossible beauty - Encounters with beings perceived as radiantly beautiful - Architectural structures of seemingly perfect proportions [Get some real quotes from Letheby and Lyon] The comparison seems apt: just as we might value a photograph for showing us a beautiful mountain range we've never seen, we might value a [[psychedelic experience]] for revealing beautiful patterns we've never encountered. But this returns us to our "what" question and the issue of shareability. Unlike physical pictures that multiple people can view together, psychedelic visions are private. My hallucinated landscape is not your hallucinated landscape. Does this mean they cannot be shared objects of [[aesthetic appreciation]]? Not necessarily. While the exact content differs between individuals, psychedelic experiences often share recognisable patterns and features. Many users independently report seeing similar geometric patterns, colour schemes, and types of structures. This suggests that psychedelics activate common neural mechanisms that generate similar classes of experiences across individuals. When two people discuss their DMT visions of "[[the machine]] elves," they're referring to experiences that, while not identical, share enough common features to be meaningfully compared. What's being appreciated isn't a single shared object, but rather instances of a shared type of [[perceptual experience]]—much as we might compare our experiences of different sunsets, each unique yet belonging to a recognisable category. ### 2.2 Naivety? It might seem that comparing [[psychedelic aesthetics]] to picture aesthetics is somewhat naive. While both psychedelics and pictures allow us to have 'perceptual experiences' (footnote to explain scare quotes), perhaps of beautiful, fantastical things, the [[aesthetic appreciation]] of paintings, illustrations etc. involves an extra element that Nanay refers to as 'design-scene properties'. Drawing on Wollheim and Budd (REFs), Nanay develops this concept to explain a central aspect of pictorial art appreciation. As he explains: > 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. These properties emerge from [[the relationship between]] physical marks on a surface ([[the design]]) and what those marks depict (the scene). - Budd's words, design-scene properties capture "the crucial characteristic of pictorial art, namely, the, interrelationship between the marks on the surface and what is depicted in them." - another nice part of the quote: > 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. Our challenger might argue that no such design-scene properties exist for psychedelic experiences. Unlike paintings, where we can, perhaps simultaneously, perhaps not, attend to both the paint and what it depicts. But there is no reason to think that there is an experiential analogue of this. As well as having the whiff of homunculi, the features of the [[physical world]] which do seem to realise our conscious experiences –neural processes– are not the sort of thing that we can perceive or attend to. [[Perceptual experience]], it might be argued, is phenomenally transparent: our experiences do not reveal their realising medium. To lay this out slightly more formally: **Premise 1:** [[Aesthetic appreciation]] of pictures requires engaging with design-scene properties—[[the relationship between]] physical elements (brushstrokes, colours, textures) and what they depict. **Premise 2:** This appreciation requires that both elements—the physical medium and what it depicts—be perceptually accessible simultaneously. **Premise 3:** Psychedelic substances themselves don't have physical properties that connect perceptually to the experiences they generate. **Premise 4:** While a painting's physical features create what we see through direct visual processing, psychedelics work through biochemical mechanisms that remain imperceptible. **Conclusion 1:** There is no perceivable relationship between psychedelic substances and the experiences they generate that could function like design-scene properties in pictures. **Conclusion 2:** Therefore, aesthetic appreciation of psychedelics cannot be modelled on aesthetic appreciation of pictures, as the essential relational properties are missing.