Maria Fedorova

My central project at the moment is about psychedelic therapy. As things currently stand, psychedelic therapy seems to hold a lot of promise for treating a diverse range of mental health conditions, such as depression, addiction, and existential distress in cancer patients. But the therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics are still incompletely understood. Nor is it as of yet clear whether controlled psychedelic use can have distinctively epistemic as well as moral benefits and risks. And while scientific interest in psychedelics is steadily increasing, they remain at the margins within academic philosophy. 

I aim to contribute to the ongoing efforts to bring psychedelic research into philosophical focus. Psychedelic therapy raises a number of philosophical questions and even when the questions it raises are not straightforwardly philosophical, philosophical theories can offer valuable tools for addressing them. Among such questions are whether the subjective experience caused by psychedelics (i.e., the psychedelic “trip”) is therapeutically significant or merely epiphenomenal; whether the therapeutic benefits of controlled psychedelic use come at serious epistemic costs; and whether psychedelics can not only make people healthier and happier but also morally better. 

Related to this, I have a couple of works in progress: 

Transformative Visions
The Role of Spontaneous Imagination in Psychedelic Therapy
(Under review) 

What Psychedelic Experience Teaches
In Defence of Perspectivalism about Psychedelic Insights 

Other work in early stages of development:

A paper on psychedelics and moral enhancement
A paper on imagination and personal transformation (with Juliette Vazard)

I’ve written a couple of things about psychedelics and imagination for The Junkyard blog. See here for an immersive mental simulation model of psychedelic visions and here for some general thoughts on the role of imagination in psychedelic therapy.