1. IntroductionFootnote ¹

The world would be a better place if the people in it were more moral than they are. If only there were a way we could enhance the moral character of humanity.Footnote ² Violence would drop. Co-operation would climb. Global poverty might be ameliorated through a boost in charitable giving. And the danger of human-caused climate change could at last be mitigated through improved collective action.Footnote ³ Unfortunately, our current methods are not working – or at least, not well enough. Maybe it is time to think creatively and ponder new approaches to making morally better humans.

One proposal that has generated a lot of attention in recent years involves the deployment of modern neuroscience and its discoveries. Instead of relying solely on traditional, external means of moral improvement – childrearing, socialisation, political institutions, and the like – this approach suggests that we should try, or at least consider trying, “internal” methods as well.Footnote ⁴ For example, we could explore the use of gene therapies or brain-level neurotechnologies to expand our moral capacities, as it were, from the inside out – perhaps even transcending our presently inherent moral limitations.Footnote ⁵ Since what is at stake is no less than the preservation of the Earth and the welfare of its inhabitants both now and in the future, all options should be on the table.Footnote ⁶ Or should they?

2. Reasons for Scepticism

When I first dipped my toe into the moral bioenhancement literature,Footnote ⁷ I was sceptical. I presumed that the idea would turn out to be a dead-end or at best a side-show – a flashy fad set to go out of fashion. Since I had been writing over the years, more or less favourably, about the prospect of using biotechnology to enhance human romantic relationships,Footnote ⁸ and since I had been doing so in close collaboration with one of the foremost architects of the moral enhancement movement, you might think that I would have been drawn to this other enhancement proposal with an air of optimism or even enthusiasm.

But I was not. For one thing, it was hard to pin down what the term “moral enhancement” was supposed to refer to, and the options for achieving it, however defined, seemed either plausible but uninteresting (primarily, those accounts that emphasised continuity with more traditional forms of moral education), or sexy and thought-provoking, but too much like science fiction (morally re-engineering the species to save the planet). In other words, the interventions that were being floated seemed either hopelessly far-fetched or, if more realistic, not worth writing home about.

Moreover, the general focus seemed to be on the potential modification of specific psychological capacities, such as the ability to empathise, rather than more global, flexible capacities that would allow one to respond appropriately to a wide range of situations (whatever those capacities or modifications turned out to be). A problem with the former approach is that the lower-level capacities, while clearly relevant to moral decision-making and behaviour, probably cannot – due to basic facts about neurochemistry – ever be successfully tweaked in isolation like so many dials in the brain.Footnote ⁹

One reason for this likely impossibility is the delicate interconnectedness of many if not most neural processes and systems. In other words, due to the overlapping web of electrochemical interactions by which the brain carries out its business, any attempt to intervene in some specific low-level cognitive or emotional capacity (assuming that such a target could ever be discretely defined, whether conceptually or in terms of physical instantiation) would likely result in undesirable side-effects, at best, and at worst, the disruption or impairment of other important functions.Footnote ¹⁰

But even if such capacities could be otherwise harmlessly fine-tuned,Footnote ¹¹ what then? I did not see how this approach would guarantee, much less amount to, moral improvement in any reliable sense. Imagine that you could take a drug that made you feel more empathy (without incurring other serious problems). Would that make you morally enhanced? Not necessarily, because the “right” amount of empathy you should feel is not a question with a stable, universal answer. Rather, it depends on the circumstances you are in, the social role you occupy, the specifics of the moral predicament you are facing, and many other factors, all of which might change over time or be different for different people.Footnote ¹² Biochemically fiddling with dials, then, in an attempt to land on the right “settings” – I hope this metaphor is not too strained to serve its purpose – seemed to me to be a non-starter.

In response to this kind of concern, which I stress is in no way original to me,Footnote ¹³ some writers have shifted away from a focus on low-level psychological capacities and their attempted biochemical modification, to thinking of moral enhancement in more general terms. G. Owen Schaefer,Footnote ¹⁴ for example, recommends what he calls indirect moral enhancements centered on improving the capacity to reason and strengthening willpower; while Harris Wiseman has recently advanced a “soft” understanding of moral enhancement that encompasses everything from ‘social control’, to ‘paternalism, law-making, medicine, and mental health, all of whose institutions involve intervening in behavior […] to prevent and punish activities that are not explicitly immoral, but that have morally related dimensions’.Footnote ¹⁵

But that strikes me as changing the conversation. In this respect, I agree with Robert Sparrow, who writes:

So we seem to be stuck with a dilemma. Either we talk about brain-level “bio” interventions that are probably neurologically impossible, or if possible, either too risky to be desirable or unlikely to be reliable moral enhancers; or we stretch out the concept of moral enhancement – and even moral bioenhancement – to the point that we sacrifice the very thing about the idea that made it seem new and exciting and thus worth talking about in the first place. That is, we sacrifice the aspect of moral enhancement that made it distinguishable from the more mundane, traditional methods of moral improvement that have been written about since the dawn of history. John Harris has described the quandary like this:

In other words, according to Harris, while high-tech enhancers might plausibly improve our ability to think clearly, concentrate, or rationally pick apart complex scenarios (which in turn could potentially help us identify and respond to moral reasons more efficiently or effectively than we would have done otherwise), there would not be anything distinctively moral about either the enhancers themselves or the capacities they would target in the brain. If Harris is correct, then it seems as though the conversation should go back to the somewhat older and more established “cognitive” enhancement debateFootnote ¹⁸ – concerning the use of “smart drugs” like methylphenidate (Ritalin), or gene therapy to improve IQFootnote ¹⁹ – which, while certainly important and perhaps indirectly relevant to moral enhancement, also feels like changing the topic.

Is there any way to have our cake and eat it too? In other words, is there any possible or actual intervention that is both practically achievable and likely to be ethically justifiable (under the right conditions), while also being radical enough to merit the flood of ink that continues to be spilled in this area? Something that would:

1. (1) keep the “bio” in moral bioenhancement, which Sparrow argues is essential to the current philosophical and cultural buzz surrounding the concept (thus ruling out “purely” social, environmental, or psycho-behavioural interventions);

2. (2) avoid the pitfalls associated with low-level “dial adjustment” (that is, attempts to biochemically intervene in, or fine-tune, particular cognitive or emotional capacities involved in moral decision-making, behaviour, and the like);

3. (3) exert a more general or wide-ranging effect on the moral agent that would contribute to her moral improvement in a robust, sustainable, flexible-across-contexts sort of way, without simply collapsing into Ritalin-style cognitive enhancement.

I believe that there is. In this essay,Footnote ²⁰ I offer a tentative account of moral (bio) enhancement that sits between the prevailing extremes of boring-but-possible and interesting-but-not-going-to-happen. Indeed, I will suggest that such enhancement is not merely hypothetical or a likely prospect for the future, but is already taking place in some communities today. And by looking at such practices and communities – which, as my title prevents me from mining for suspense, involve the use of psychedelic substances – I claim that bioethicists can gain practical insights to help focus the moral enhancement debate.

3. Defining the Phenomenon

Before I turn to specific interventions, I need to define my terms. In a recent essay,Footnote ²¹ my co-authors and I proposed a novel definition for what we call agential moral neuroenhancement, which is a subclass of moral bioenhancement that focusses specifically on durable changes to a moral agent, as effectuated (at least in part) by direct interventions into the central nervous system (CNS). We chose this focus because the CNS is the part of human biology most likely to be modified by any actual intended moral bioenhancer; but if you prefer the more general “bioenhancement” you can make the necessary adjustments to the following:

You will notice that this definition, by itself, is agnostic about what counts as ‘morally better’ or ‘more moral’. In principle, therefore, one and the same neurointervention could be considered a moral enhancer by one person or moral theory, and a moral diminisher, or something more neutral, by another person or theory; but this should not cause us too much concern. Reasonable people disagree about what constitutes moral improvement compared to baseline, not only in the realm of potential high tech bioenhancers, but also in the realm of more traditional methods of moral education or spiritual practice.

So, you might raise your children to believe such-and-so about ethics and morality, and encourage them to be and behave accordingly, while I might raise mine to believe so-and-such, but this does not mean that moral improvement is impossible or that we should not try to better our children – and ourselves – to the best of our abilities. For one thing, not only is there likely to be a great deal of overlap between our respective sos and suches (there are wide pockets of concurrence across societies and moral systems),Footnote ²² but insofar as there is a genuine clash between our views or approaches to morality, this is often beneficial from a moral perspective. As Schaefer notes, ‘moral disagreement – while potentially inhibiting consensus-building – is actually an important feature of society’.Footnote ²³ Among other reasons, it is important because

There is more that could be said about such moral disagreement. But let us set that issue aside: for our purposes, it should be enough for you to fill in whatever account of moral betterness you prefer as needed over the course of what follows. Now that we have a definition of moral enhancement – or moral neuroenhancement – in hand, we can ask ourselves the central question of this essay: Are there any real-life technologies that could facilitate the sort of change described in that definition (again, granting that some people will disagree about what counts as moral improvement in certain cases), while also meeting the three desiderata listed in the introduction? I have already alluded to the idea that certain psychedelic drugs might plausibly play such a role. I will now explore this suggestion more directly.

4. Drugs, Spirituality, and Religion

Writing in the Journal of Philosophy in 1964, the scholar of religions Huston Smith observed that ‘in his trial-and-error life explorations, man almost everywhere has stumbled upon connections between vegetables (eaten or brewed) and actions (yogic breathing exercises, whirling dervish dances, flagellations) which altered states of consciousness’. From a neuroscientific perspective, Smith continues, ‘we now understand these states to be the products of changes in brain chemistry. From the sociological perspective we see that they tended to be connected in some way with religion’.Footnote ²⁵

More recently, the theologian Ron Cole-Turner – referring to what he calls ‘technologies of spiritual enhancement’ – similarly notes that drugs and religion have been linked in human societies for millennia.Footnote ²⁶ As he sees it, the most readily (bio)enhanceable human trait is in fact ‘our capacity for spiritual experience’. Compared to cosmetic surgeries aimed at bodily enhancement,Footnote ²⁷ he writes, ‘spiritual enhancement is inexpensive and painless’. Compared to cognitive enhancement with drugs like methylphenidate, ‘spiritual enhancement is highly effective and enduring’. Compared to lifespan extension, ‘compelling evidence indicates that spiritual enhancement actually works in a highly positive and predictable way’.Footnote ²⁸

Our topic is moral enhancement, of course, not spirituality or religion. In quoting Cole-Turner and Smith, therefore, I do not mean to suggest that there is a straightforward, much less affirmative relationship between either of the latter notions and agential moral neuroenhancement as I have defined it: indeed religions in particular, as well as perceived religious commitments, often encourage immoral behaviour.Footnote ²⁹ I am only setting the stage for the idea that altered states of consciousness, brought about in part or in whole by the ingestion of certain biochemical substances, have long been considered to yield (whether on their own or in conjunction with other teachings or practices) important insights into the nature of reality and human existence, often with transformative implications for how we should live from a moral perspective.Footnote ³⁰

In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley writes of his experience taking mescaline, a cactus-derived drug most commonly used today by members of the Native American Church.Footnote ³¹ The ‘mescaline experience’, Huxley writes,

Notice the ‘helpful’ rather than ‘necessary’ effect of the drug in bringing about the experience that was, to Huxley, of inestimable value. I will say more about this issue in a later section, but for now I wish to simply raise the suggestion that if psychedelic substances are ever to feature in a prudent plan for personal moral bioenhancement,Footnote ³³ they should probably serve a facilitating or adjunctive role, rather than determinative one, in the overall enhancement process.Footnote ³⁴ In other words, they should not be taken “in a vacuum” – that is, by oneself or with unprepared others, without adequate mental or emotional groundwork, stripped of all cultural context – with the expectation that they will somehow cause moral improvement all on their own. Writing about psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”, Johns Hopkins psychologist William Richards highlights the need for realistic expectations:

Over a century earlier, a more famous William advanced a similar perspective in reference to the altered states of consciousness occasioned by his use of nitrous oxide.Footnote ³⁶ In his 1902 masterpiece, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James writes that such drug-induced subjective changes ‘may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map’.Footnote ³⁷ Elsewhere in the same passage, he presages Huxley's point about the potential value of non-rational aspects of mental life:

Might one of those fields of application be moral neuroenhancement? To answer this question, let us zoom out from the specific examples we have so far been discussing and consider the class of relevant substances all together.

5. Psychedelics and Moral Neuroenhancement

In their study of spirituality in psychedelic drugs users, Levente Móró and colleagues write that the class of psychoactive substances most closely associated with transpersonal and spiritual domains is psychedelics.Footnote ³⁹ The word psychedelic, coined in the 1950s, is a mashup of the Ancient Greek words psychē (ψυχή, “soul”) and dēloun (δηλοῦν, “to make visible, to reveal”), roughly translatable as “mind-revealing”. Some psychedelics may be found in nature; others are produced in the lab. The most prominent examples include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); psilocybin and psilocin from the mushroom Psilocybe (“magic” mushrooms); mescaline from cacti, such as peyote (Lophophora williamsii); and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), along with ingestible preparations containing that molecule plus MAOI inhibitors, such as the plant-based brew ayahuasca. Footnote ⁴⁰ On some classifications, 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), commonly known as ecstasy, also counts as a psychedelic substance, although it has a different risk profile and mechanism of action compared to the others; it will therefore be treated separately in this chapter.Footnote ⁴¹

Primarily acting on serotonin receptors in neocortical pyramidal cells, psychedelics may induce ‘temporary and reversible altered states of consciousness by destabilizing and repatterning several psychological subsystems, such as perception, attention, cognition, memory, and sense of self’. Such changes may result in marked shifts in subjective experience, sometimes involving hallucinations across multiple modalities, synesthesia (blending of senses), ‘strong emotions varying from terror to awe, encounters and communication with seemingly autonomous entities, space and time distortions, and feelings of oneness, understanding, or insight’.Footnote ⁴²

Generally considered physiologically safe and nonaddictive, psychedelics are characterised by much lower acute toxicity than other drugs such as alcohol.Footnote ⁴³ In carefully structured research or therapeutic settings with appropriate supervision, the above-mentioned mental states can typically be reached in a controlled way, reducing the risk for negative long-term physiological and psychological aftereffects to a minimum.Footnote ⁴⁴

Adverse reactions, including persisting hallucinationsFootnote ⁴⁵ and ‘bad trips’,Footnote ⁴⁶ do sometimes occur. Generally these are associated with ‘unintentional or unattended usage, a disturbing or overstimulating environment, inadequate preparedness and a careless attitude toward drug use, pre-existing or dormant psychiatric conditions, and earlier or recent unprocessed traumas of the psyche’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Moreover, too-frequent or highly repeated use may increase the risk of neurotoxic effects, especially in the case of MDMA, and even more especially when combined with other drugs such as the stimulants cocaine or methamphetamine.Footnote ⁴⁸ More moderate or occasional use, by contrast, particularly in a supportive environment and with ‘proper conceptual and ideological background’,Footnote ⁴⁹ can trigger subjective experiences that may be interpreted by the drug-user as including – or fostering the development of – profound moral insights,Footnote ⁵⁰ ‘deeply meaningful religious revelations’, and even ‘spiritual awakenings’.Footnote ⁵¹

For example, in a recent double-blind clinical study, Roland R. Griffiths and colleagues reported that psilocybin, when administered to carefully pre-screened volunteers, ‘occasioned experiences which had marked similarities to classic mystical experiences and which were rated by volunteers as having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance’. Moreover, ‘the volunteers attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior that were consistent with changes rated by friends and family’, including increased patience, good-natured humour and playfulness, mental flexibility, optimism, interpersonal perceptiveness and caring, and compassion or social concern.Footnote ⁵²

Similar effects have been reported for ayahuasca, the above-mentioned brew containing DMT and MAOI inhibitors. Although less-well studied in a scientific context, ayahuasca has been used in traditional shamanic ceremonies across the Amazon basin and elsewhere for hundreds of years.Footnote ⁵³ The medical anthropologist Michael Winkelman argues that the active ingredients in ayahuasca, in combination with an appropriate diet, facilitate altered states of consciousness in the initiate that allow him or her to better appreciate the teachings of the shaman:

It is not entirely clear what it means to be able to control one's ‘spiritual energies’, but some insight into the matter may be gained from observational studies looking at the positive effects of ayahuasca on mindfulness,Footnote ⁵⁵ which preliminary research suggests may augment one's ability to resist powerful urges (thereby allowing one to act less impulsively), reduce a person's susceptibility to acting in response to addictive drug cues, and increase one's capacity to maintain perspective in response to strong emotional states.Footnote ⁵⁶

If such findings turn out to be robust and replicable,Footnote ⁵⁷ they would appear to support the existence of a biochemically assisted means of improving a higher-level, flexible capacity to modulate one's moral and emotional responses across a range of settings – akin to what was described in the third desideratum for a plausible real-life moral neuroenhancer (see Introduction). Given such suggestive findings, as well as many others that could be cited, it is curious that bioethicists engaged in the current moral enhancement debate, with few exceptions,Footnote ⁵⁸ have written hardly a word about psychedelic drugs.Footnote ⁵⁹ How might this apparent blind spot be explained?

In his recent book on the revival of hallucinogen research since the “decade of the brain” – the 1990s – Nicolas Langlitz argues that the idea of using biotechnology for moral enhancement, in roughly the sense intended by current advocates, had already been raised in earnest in the second half of the last century. Among others, Timothy Leary and his followers, as well as the wider hippie movement, actively hoped that psychedelic drugs (in concert with other factors including changes to prevailing social norms and institutions) ‘would turn us into a more virtuous, more creative, and happier species’.Footnote ⁶⁰

Continuing into the 1970s, many academic researchers besides Leary were convinced that their investigations into psychedelic experiences ‘would contribute to propelling human consciousness toward unheard of capacities’. But by the 1990s, following a conservative shift in the culture, research into mind-altering substances had taken an entirely different turn: ‘utopian dreams gave way to a less fanciful conception of enhancement as optimization of already known human capacities’. In contrast to the earlier ‘psychedelic explorations of human potential’, Langlitz notes, ‘this one-dimensional notion of enhancement lent itself to an experimental operationalization’, consistent with the increasingly reductionist approach of contemporary science.Footnote ⁶¹

Thus, while we do see research into psychedelic substances being conducted today, it is almost exclusively within a highly medicalised context that has not had much bearing on the moral enhancement literature.Footnote ⁶² In the meantime, as noted earlier, advocates of moral bioenhancement have focussed their attention primarily on “one-dimensional” interventions into specific capacities (relying on oxytocin sprays, brain stimulation devices, and the like), or on more global drug-based interventions that are confined to the “cognitive” realm. To see how a psychotropic drug, by contrast, might be used in practice to foster apparent moral improvement (without reducing to the augmentation of purely “cognitive” capacities like attention or reasoning ability), consider the case of MDMA.

6. How Would it Work? A Case Study With MDMA

In the 1980s, before it was made illegal, MDMA – popularly known as “ecstasy” due to the feelings of euphoria it can induce – was being used as an aid in couple's therapy by professional counselors.Footnote ⁶³ Writing in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs in 1998, George Greer and Requa Tolbert described a method of conducting MDMA-enhanced therapeutic sessions based on their experience with roughly 80 clients between 1980–1985.Footnote ⁶⁴ After careful pre-screening and obtaining informed consent, Greer and Tolbert met with the clients in their homes, believing that a more personal setting would be best for ‘facilitating comfort and trust’.Footnote ⁶⁵ Consistent with the caveat raised by William Richards concerning psilocybin that I quoted earlier, they emphasised the importance of non-drug variables, such as the person's mindset, intentions, and expectations, in shaping the drug-mediated experience:

Depending on client preference, they started the session with meditation or prayer. Then, they administered a controlled dose of 75 to 150 mg, adjusting for the client's sex or body mass, with a 50 mg booster if requested later on. Clients wore eyeshades to shut out visual distractions and reduce the risk of overstimulation. While waiting for the drug to take effect, they listened to classical music, usually through a pair of headphones – Mahler and Beethoven were among the more popular choices. Then, when they felt ready, clients spoke with their romantic partner. Often, they would speak for hours.

Not everyone had a major breakthrough. But some did. Three years after her treatment, one client, the thirty-something daughter of Holocaust survivors, wrote: ‘I still am a different person. I'm not prone to getting caught up in the negative dark influences in my character. I have more choice over how I feel’. Previously prone to ‘anxiety attacks’ and intrusive thoughts about concentration camps, she now said: ‘I can handle my emotions […] I understand how they work more’.Footnote ⁶⁷

Through their own research and that of other pioneers, Greer and Tolbert came to argue that MDMA – administered in the right way, and with the careful oversight of an appropriately qualified guide – could help some individuals achieve ‘a more healthy and accurate perspective of who and what they [are] psychologically’, by decreasing irrational fear responses to perceived emotional threats.Footnote ⁶⁸ Their clients seemed to agree. According to Greer and Tolbert, ‘roughly 90%’ of their clients ‘had generally positive and useful experiences’ after participating in MDMA-assisted therapy, with some reporting that they felt more love toward their partners and were better able to ‘forgive the pain of the past’.Footnote ⁶⁹

Some of these outcomes seem consistent with moral improvement; others seem to apply to other domains such as mental health. Nevertheless, the immediate effects of MDMA wear off after a few hours. Especially at lower doses, the drug does not seem to ‘significantly distort perception, thinking, or memory’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Greer and Tolbert speculate that the ‘learning that took place during the session often became consolidated and applied to clients’ everyday lives long after the session had ended’. For example, couples who experienced a session together ‘frequently reported basing their relationships much more on love and trust than on fear and suspicion’.Footnote ⁷¹ But these results were not simply caused by MDMA – or so it seemed to Greer and Tolbert. Rather, they were ‘achieved by the clients making decisions based on what they learned during their MDMA sessions, and [by] remembering and applying those decisions for as long as they were able and willing after the session was over’.Footnote ⁷²

What practical lessons might bioethicists take from the historical example of MDMA-assisted marital therapy for the debate about moral bioenhancement? To my mind, at least two main points stand out:

1. (1) If drugs are to be used for moral enhancement, they should be administered in a carefully controlled setting to willing volunteers who have been properly prepared for the experience, ideally under the guidance of an appropriately qualified person or persons (i.e., someone with requisite experience with the drug, its likely effects, means for addressing any problems, etc.).

2. (2) Moral neuroenhancers would likely not function by simply causing moral improvement in the agent, nor should they be expected to work in such a way. Instead, they would most likely foster states of mind that that allowed one to engage with the moral domain in a more productive or insightful way, storing away any lessons learned for application in the “real world” once the effects of the drug had worn off.

The second point is important to emphasise. Some people might be concerned that “popping a pill” to achieve deep moral insights would be in some sense too easy, superficial, or unsustainable – the sort of thing that, quickly obtained, could just as quickly be lost. As Huston Smith has put it: ‘what promised to be a shortcut will prove to be a short circuit; what began as a religion will end as a religion surrogate’.Footnote ⁷³

Thinking of the “pill” as an adjunct to moral development, however, leaves plenty of room for active, non-superficial engagement and intentional moral learning. As Smith wrote, the evidence concerning psychedelics that was available to him as early as the 1960s

Again, Smith is focussing on ‘religion’, but the word “moral” could be swapped in and the sentence remain just as plausible. The point is that the drug should not be doing all the work. Rather, it should be used, if at all, as an aid to moral enhancement – and on an “as needed” rather than routine basis. Moreover, whatever insights are gained through such use should be combined with ‘diligent exercise of the will’ to be properly understood, much less productively applied to the agent's normal waking world.

James Hughes has given a helpful illustration of this approach in his essay, ‘Using Neurotechnologies to Develop Virtues: A Buddhist Approach to Cognitive Enhancement’. According to Hughes, ‘a distinctively Buddhist approach to the use of neurotechnologies’ would seek to ‘avoid being stuck in any one set of moods or mental states’ by constantly turning to biotechnologies to elicit the desired states of mind. Thus, ‘using a drug or nanoneural device that created an addiction to a blessed out state of pleasure would [be] unwholesome’ and morally problematic.Footnote ⁷⁵

In other words, there is an important difference between ‘a dynamic eudaemonic happiness grounded in [genuine] self-awareness’, and ‘the constant stimulation of dopamine [or other brain chemicals] on a hedonic treadmill’. So, while some Western Buddhists ‘credit their experimentation with psychedelics with catalyzing their interest in meditation, and providing an initial glimpse of their inner lives that they would not otherwise have had’, few such Buddhists believe that the psychedelics, on their own, were responsible for effectuating the positive changes to their personality over the long-term, further recognising that ‘habitual use of psychedelics would be very unhealthy’.Footnote ⁷⁶

The approach advocated by Smith and Hughes seems sensible. Psychedelic moral enhancers should not be regarded as a panacea, or as something that magically overrides all conscious, rational thought to directly instill the desired moral changes in the agent. Instead, they should be seen as potentially contributing to an opportunity for moral growth, in part by providing or fostering the recognition of insights into oneself and one's inner workings, as well as the world around one, that might not otherwise be so readily obtained. Then, it is up to the agent to make good use of those insights in her process of moral development.