[n4r9]

> He and others argue that this is embedded into the drug as a form of information, but there’s no way to substantiate this or any other claim using the scientific method.

Is there really no way? I can imagine for example conducting a double-blind trial with various psychedelics and controls, and recording the subjects' verbalised experiences during and after the trip. This would give some strong clues as to which aspects of the experience are inherent/neurochemical, and which are culutrally primed.

You can go even further and test it with people that have never heard of psychedelic drugs, let alone been culturally primed. It would take a lot of funding of course, but in principle it's possible.

I totally accept that we know very little about the brain to have a good mechanistic understanding of subjective experience. But I think we're making great progress! A few years ago I went to a lecture by David Nutt, who researches the potential for psilocybin and ketamine therapies to treat depression. What struck me was that it is already possible to measure and talk scientifically about the mechanistic effects of psychedelic drugs on the brain, and how those measured effects correlate to lived experience.