Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Doors of Perception
"If the doors of perception were cleansed" — Huxley's 1954 essay on his first mescaline experience, the founding text of modern psychedelic-philosophical writing
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Doors of Perception (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Non-local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Doors of Perception
Altered psychedelic time — the famous temporal distortion in which moments expand and the ordinary clock falls away.
Space
The Doors of Perception
Altered perceptual space — objects "self-luminous," space charged with significance.
Matter
The Doors of Perception
Material objects become transfigured under the cleared perception; matter as the local manifestation of broader reality.
Observer
The Doors of Perception
The psychedelic-experiential observer — embodied, with temporarily relaxed perceptual filter. Mind-at-Large as cosmic-ordering framework glimpsed through the experience.
Energy
The Doors of Perception
The energies of cleared perception — the flow of significance through ordinary objects.
Information
The Doors of Perception
The much larger reality available to Mind-at-Large, ordinarily filtered out by the brain's reducing valve.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Huxley's metaphysical interpretation of the mescaline experience (the reducing-valve theory, Mind-at-Large) has been criticised by naturalist philosophers as overreading subjective experience as ontological evidence. The 1960s counterculture's appropriation of Huxley's essay (especially Leary) generated political-legal backlash that led to the decades-long suppression of psychedelic research. Recent psychedelic-research renaissance (MAPS, Johns Hopkins) is partly a rehabilitation of Huxley's framing of psychedelics as legitimate philosophical-spiritual subjects.