I try to attack such questions by beginning with the fundamental condition that the division between one's self and one's environment as experienced by agents is illusory, the particular illusion that manifests structured by those conditions of possibility for the emergence of the particular agent in question (ie, self, in this case). Instead, we must turn our attention to the logical primacy of the self-other interaction itself, in producing both self-hood and other-hood. In this way, as agents investigate, and in particular as they do so collaboratively, they actually transform the character of the interaction that produces this investigation. While we transform our environment materially via technology, this transformation is also bound with those conceptual frameworks which render technological transformation possible but also intelligible, these frameworks of meaning bound with production of an interpersonal sphere of cooperative linkage of material activity rooted in its participants' shared understanding of this cooperation.
In this way, our perspective literally transforms the world, as the world for us is inextricably nested within (and in dynamic interaction with) that part of the world as of yet untouched by our investigation. To sum this condition up, as we investigate, examine, construct, assess, etc., we transform the world for us, this world nested within a wider structure that conditions what types of investigations could possibly emerge, but the exercise of this agency in turn transforms the space of possibilities for future investigation.
A (side?) note: while this agent-environment interaction presents moments intelligible in terms of materiality, cognition, information, intersubjectivity, etc., this is not to say that material conditions, cognitive schemata, a core "self", etc. exist logically prior to that interaction, structuring its form, or standing as unitary entities that later meet in interaction. Instead, all of these ways of understanding our place in the world, and indeed what things that world might contain, are in a more rigorous sense themselves emergent properties of this (partially ineffable) ongoing, interactive process and the wider context which cultivates it. However, due to the circumstances in which we've emerged as agents, we are prone to mistake these fuzzy, fluid, contextually determined aspects of our relationship with our environment as static, stable "things" that later meet in interaction, or static characteristics (or even laws) governing how different 'things' may interact. These 'things' include an "I", a "me" (set in dynamic but ambiguous relation), our very experience of a material world external to us, etc. However, though lacking logical primacy, our reckoning with the cognitive tools we create/discover bears its indelible mark on that interactive process; logical primacy stands distinct from strictly temporal causal primacy.
To return to your question, insofar as we use psychoactive drugs as cognitive tools, we alter the body of preconditions giving rise to cognition, allowing for the cultivation of novel perception, assessment, inference, conceptual analysis, etc. As applied, these patterns of cognition alter not only how we understand our place in interaction with the world but the very course this interaction will take. Now, I am pretty skeptical that psychedelics could transform the material world (or allow for direct telepathy, remote viewing, etc.) in ways often literally described by the nature of the psychedelic experience. Like the illusions of everyday experience, the content of psychedelic experiences demands critical interpretation, to set the fruits of such cognitive exploration in relation with and application to our ongoing interaction with our environment. For example, just as my perception of this keyboard (or even experiencing it as a distinct, discrete entity in the first place!) is refracted through the lens of my interaction with it, obscuring the keyboard 'as it is' (as if such a thing could exist at all!), the changes in the bases of cognition brought on by psychedelia often present themselves in terms of sensory fireworks, narrative analogies, metaphorical extension, spiritual symbols, directly experience psychic or emotional 'energy', etc., none of which directly explain psychedelia's direct neuro-informational bases. However, as with belief in God, application of belief in the psychedelic experience can drastically transform how one understands and navigates their situation.
ebola
