The end of Plato

… it was during [Professor Annette] Baier’s first teaching position at the University of Aberdeen that her focus shifted dramatically and permanently from Plato to Hume. “The Psychology and Psychiatry Departments were conducting experiments to find out what effect or change the drug mescaline had on the mind. I’d never had a consciousness-changing experience so I agreed to take part.

“The experiments made me talk about Plato, quizzing me the whole time about what I was seeing. I could remember it later and knew I’d been hallucinating. The whole experience was a bad one and took away my confidence in my thinking about Plato. In retrospect, the experiments shouldn’t have happened. If there’d been ethics committees they would and should have forbidden them,” she says.

Kerrie Waterworth, “Alumni Profile: Philosophy for life”. University of Otago Magazine 22, Feburary 2009. 14-5.

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