Colloquium Meetings 2026-2027
Alberto Cavallarin
Title: Against psychedelics as “non-specific amplifiers”: Why psychedelic science still needs universality
16 October 2026
Bio: Alberto Cavallarin is a PhD candidate at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His work focuses on the epistemology of religion, spirituality, and altered states of consciousness. His PhD project explores how mystical experiences motivate shifts in metaphysical and moral beliefs and, specifically, whether these shifts are cross-cultural.
Abstract: It is increasingly common among scholars in the psychedelic space to understand these substances as “non-specific amplifiers”. This hypothesis suggests that psychedelics make one more susceptible to set and setting, therefore amplifying what is already present in one’s worldview or context, rather than motivating new experiences and beliefs. This idea pushes back against the view, more popular until recently, that the experiences induced by psychedelics and the changes in beliefs they motivate are cross-cultural, and can therefore result in new insights. This presentation pushes back against the pushback. I provide reasons to reject this hypothesis in its stronger version (psychedelics are merely non-specific amplifiers), and to be suspicious of it in its softer version (psychedelics are primarily non-specific amplifiers). I conclude that, given the current evidence, psychedelics are better described as specific amplifiers.