Bortolotti’s Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs defends the view that delusions are beliefs on a continuum with other beliefs. A different view is that delusions are more like illusions, that is, they arise from faulty perception. This view, which is not targeted by the book, makes it easier to explain why delusions are so alien and disabling but needs to appeal to forensic aspects of functioning.

Delusional beliefs have sometimes been considered as rational inferences from abnormal experiences. We explore this idea in more detail, making the following points. Firstly, the abnormalities of cognition which initially prompt the entertaining of a delusional belief are not always conscious and since we prefer to restrict the term “experience” to consciousness we refer to “abnormal data” rather than “abnormal experience”. Secondly, we argue that in relation to many delusions (we consider eight) one can clearly identify what the abnormal cognitive (...) data are which prompted the delusion and what the neuropsychological impairment is which is responsible for the occurrence of these data; but one can equally clearly point to cases where this impairments is present but delusion is not. So the impairment is not sufficient for delusion to occur. A second cognitive impairment, one which impairs the ability to evaluate beliefs, must also be present. Thirdly (and this is the main thrust of our chapter) we consider in detail what the nature of the inference is that leads from the abnormal data to the belief. This is not deductive inference and it is not inference by enumerative induction; it is abductive inference. We offer a Bayesian account of abductive inference and apply it to the explanation of delusional belief. (shrink)

This paper argues that Darwin's theory of evolution offers two modes of understanding the relation between life and human knowledge. On the one hand, Darwin can be included within a general turn to “life,” in which human self-knowledge is part of a general unfolding of increasing awareness and anthropological reflexivity; life creates an organism, man, capable of discerning the logic of organic existence. On the other hand, Darwin offers the possibility of understanding life beyond the self-maintenance of organism and, therefore, (...) beyond the rational of life's putative striving. (shrink)

The tendency to draw mind-brain dichotomies and evaluate mental disorders dualistically arises in both laypeople and mental health professionals, leads to biased judgments, and contributes to mental health stigmatization. This paper offers a theory identifying an underlying source of these evaluations in social practice. According to this theory, dualistic evaluations are rooted in two mechanisms by which we represent and evaluate the beliefs of others in folk psychology and theory of mind: the doxastic conception of mental disorders and doxastic voluntarism. (...) Tracing these origins contributes to our understanding of mental state representation in cognitive science and philosophy of psychiatry, the concept of belief in philosophy of mind, and may help improve patient experience and treatment in light of social stigmatization and bias toward mental illness. (shrink)

What explains the context sensitivity of some (apparent) beliefs? Why, for example, do religious beliefs appear to control behaviour in some contexts but not others? Cases like this are heterogeneous, and we may require a matching heterogeneity of explanations, ranging over their contents, the attitudes of agents and features of the environment. In this paper, I put forward a hypothesis of the last kind. I argue that some beliefs (religious and non-religious) are coupled to cues, which either trigger an internal (...) representation or even partially constitute the beliefs. I show that such coupling will give rise to the context-sensitivity, without entailing that religious believers take a different attitude to belief content. (shrink)

In recent times, explanations of the Capgras delusion have tended to emphasise the cognitive dysfunction that is believed to occur at the second stage of two-stage models. This is generally viewed as a response to the inadequacies of the one-stage account. Whilst accepting that some form of cognitive disruption is a necessary part of the aetiology of the Capgras delusion, I nevertheless argue that the emphasis placed on this second-stage is to the detriment of the important role played by the (...) phenomenology underlying the disorder, both in terms of the formation and maintenance of the delusional belief. This paper therefore proposes an interactionist two-stage model in which the phenomenal experience of the Capgras patient is examined, emphasised, and its relation to top-down processing discussed. (shrink)

This paper contrasts an interactionist account of delusional misidentification with more traditional one- and two-stage models. Unlike the unidirectional nature of these more traditional models, in which the aetiology of the disorder is said to progress from a neurological disruption via an anomalous experience to a delusional belief, the interactionist account posits the interaction of top-down and bottom-up processes to better explain the maintenance of the delusional belief. In addition, it places a greater emphasis on the patient’s underlying phenomenal experience (...) in accounting for the specificity of the delusional content. The role played by patient phenomenology is examined in light of Ratcliffe’s recent phenomenological account. Similarities and differences are discussed. The paper concludes that a purely phenomenological account is unable to differentiate between non-delusional patient groups, who have what appear to be equivalent phenomenal experiences to patients suffering from delusional misidentification but without the delusional belief, and delusional groups, something the interactionist model is able to do. (shrink)

Delusions are studied in two philosophical traditions: the continental or phenomenological tradition and the Anglo-American or analytic tradition. Each has its own view of delusions. Broadly stated, phenomenologists view delusions as a disturbed experience whilst most analytic researchers view them as beliefs. It is my contention that the most plausible account of delusions must ultimately incorporate valuable insights from both traditions. To illustrate the potential value of integration I provide a novel model of the Capgras delusion which describes how an (...) analytic, cognitive neuropsychological two-factor account of the Capgras delusion and the phenomenological view of delusions might be integrated. (shrink)

A recent debate in the literature on delusions centers on the question of whether delusions are beliefs or not. In this paper, an overlooked distinction between egocentric and encyclopedic doxastic states is introduced and brought to bear on this debate, in particular with regard to delusions of misidentification. The result is that a more accurate characterization of the delusional subject’s doxastic point of view is made available. The patient has a genuine egocentric belief (“This man is not my father”), but (...) fails to have the commonly attributed encyclopedic belief (“My father has been replaced by an impostor”). (shrink)

I suggest that we can think of delusional misidentification in terms of systematic errors in the management of mental files. I begin by sketching the orthodox “bottom-up” aetiology of delusional misidentification. I suggest that the orthodox aetiology can be given a descriptivist or a singularist interpretation. I present three cases that a descriptivist interpretation needs to account for. I then introduce a singularist approach, one that is based on mental files, and show how it opens the way for different and (...) potentially more plausible accounts of these three cases. I reflect on how this mental files approach can be viewed either as a supplement to the orthodox aetiology, or as suggesting an altogether different aetiology. I end by addressing a concern surrounding the explanatory power of mental files. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of understanding schizophrenic delusion through the role of a primary alteration of subjective experience. Two approaches are contrasted: the first defines schizophrenic delusion as a primary symptom resisting any attempt to understand, whereas the second describes delusion as a secondary symptom, to be understood as a rational reaction of the self. The paper discusses the possibility of applying this second approach to schizophrenic delusion. This leads us to raise the issue of the specificity of psychotic (...) experiences and to wonder whether some accounts of delusion arising in neurological disorders can be generalized into psychotic delusion. A few points are addressed, demanding clarification and the rephrasing of some assumptions implied by the model of a secondary delusion. These points call for an interaction between clinical descriptions, neurocognitive explorations and a philosophical analysis of psychotic subjective experiences. (shrink)

Visual self-recognition is often controversially cited as an indicator of self-awareness and assessed with the mirror-mark test. Great apes and humans, unlike small apes and monkeys, have repeatedly passed mirror tests, suggesting that the underlying brain processes are homologous and evolved 14-18 million years ago. However, neuroscientific, developmental, and clinical dissociations show that the medium used for self-recognition (mirror vs photograph vs video) significantly alters behavioral and brain responses, likely due to perceptual differences among the different media and prior experience. (...) On the basis of this evidence and evolutionary considerations, we argue that the visual self-recognition skills evident in humans and great apes are a byproduct of a general capacity to collate representations, and need not index other aspects of self-awareness. (shrink)

Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as drained of (...) their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

The text concerns the role of emotions in delusion formation. Provided are definitions from DSM-V and DSM-IV-R and the problems found in those definitions. One of them, the problem of delusion formation, is described when providing cognitive theories of delusions. The core of the paper is a presentation of the emotional and affective disorders in delusions, especially Capgras delusion and Cotard delusion. The author provides a comparison of the kinds of delusions and the conclusions taken from neuroimaging studies. As a (...) result of the fact that an explanation of delusion formation focusing on emotional problems turns out to be insufficient, the author provides examples of the reasoning impairments which coexist with them. At the end of the article, some hypotheses are proposed concerning the role of emotions and reasoning in delusion formation and the relation between belief disorders and emotional disorders. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze those theories that interpret misidentification delusions in terms of mentalization. The hypothesis under examination holds that a mentalization framework is useful for describing misidentification delusions when identification is thought to be partially based on mentalization. The article provides both a characterization and possible interpretations of such delusions, and possible relations between misidentification and mentalization are scrutinized. Whether the mentalization approach may explain or describe such kinds of mental disorders is considered, with the (...) conclusion that while this approach is unsatisfactory, there is some room for future improvement. (shrink)

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing.It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic suppressive mechanism – presumably mediated via attention – which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of ‘unreality’.Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical (...) controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli.Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings. (shrink)

People suffering from severe monothematic delusions, such as Capgras, Fregoli, or Cotard patients, regularly assert extraordinary and unlikely things. For example, some say that their loved ones have been replaced by impostors. A popular view in philosophy and cognitive science is that such monothematic delusions aren't beliefs because they don't guide behaviour and affect in the way that beliefs do. Or, if they are beliefs, they are somehow anomalous, atypical, or marginal beliefs. We present evidence from five studies that folk (...) psychology unambiguously views monothematic delusions as stereotypical beliefs. This calls into question widespread assumptions in the professional literature about belief's stereotypical functional profile. We also show that folk psychology views delusional patients as holding contradictory beliefs. And we show that frequent assertion is a powerful cue to belief ascription, more powerful than even a robust and consistent track record of non-verbal behaviour. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subjects assertion that p matches her non-verbal behavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from nearly 6,000 people across twenty-six samples, spanning twenty-two countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we suggest that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely (...) asserts that p, non-linguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

The impact of our desires and preferences upon our ordinary, everyday beliefs is well-documented [Gilovich, T. . How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press.]. The influence of such motivational factors on delusions, which are instances of pathological misbelief, has tended however to be neglected by certain prevailing models of delusion formation and maintenance. This paper explores a distinction between two general classes of theoretical explanation for delusions; the motivational (...) and the deficit. Motivational approaches view delusions as extreme instances of self-deception; as defensive attempts to relieve pain and distress. Deficit approaches, in contrast, view delusions as the consequence of defects in the normal functioning of belief mechanisms, underpinned by neuroanatomical or neurophysiological abnormalities. It is argued that although there are good reasons to be sceptical of motivational theories , recent experiments confirm that motives are important causal forces where delusions are concerned. It is therefore concluded that the most comprehensive account of delusions will involve a theoretical unification of both motivational and deficit approaches. (shrink)

Young and colleagues . Betwixt life and death: case studies of the Cotard delusion. In P. W. Halligan & J. C. Marshall , Method in madness: Case studies in cognitive neuropsychiatry. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.) have suggested that cases of the Cotard delusion result when a particular perceptual anomaly occurs in the context of an internalising attributional style. This hypothesis has not previously been tested directly. We report here an investigation of attributional style in a 24-year-old woman with Cotard (...) delusion . LU’s attributional style was assessed using the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire . A new measure of causal locus: the internal, personal and situational attributions questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 20, 261–264.). LU showed a significantly greater proportion of internalising attributions than the control group, both overall and for negative events specifically. The results obtained thus support an association of Cotard delusion with an internalising attributional style, and are therefore consistent with the account of Young and colleagues. The potential brain basis of Cotard delusion is discussed. (shrink)

In both cognitive science and philosophy, many theorists have recently appealed to a predictive processing framework to offer explanations of why certain individuals form delusional beliefs. One aim of this essay will be to illustrate how one could plausibly develop a predictive processing account in different ways to account for the onset of different kinds of delusions. However, the second aim of this essay will be to discuss two significant limitations of the predictive processing framework. First, I shall draw on (...) the structure of explanatory why-questions to argue that predictive processing theories can only partially explain the formation of delusional beliefs. Second, I shall argue that predictive processing theories cannot explain how implausible delusional hypotheses are generated. Yet understanding why an agent even generates a delusional hypothesis is a crucial step to understanding why she eventually comes to believe it. The final section of the essay presents three alternative ways the process of hypothesis generation might be functionally divergent in cases of delusional cognition. (shrink)

The existence and extent of animal suffering provides grounds for a serious evidential challenge to theism. In the wake of the Darwinian revolution, this strain of natural atheology has taken on substantially greater significance. In this essay we argue that there are at least four neo-Cartesian views on the nature of animal minds which would serve to deflect this evidential challenge.

Delusional beliefs are typically pathological. Being pathological is clearly distinguished from being false or being irrational. Anna might falsely believe that his husband is having an affair but it might just be a simple mistake. Again, Sam might irrationally believe, without good evidence, that he is smarter than his colleagues, but it might just be a healthy self-deceptive belief. On the other hand, when a patient with brain damage caused by a car accident believes that his father was replaced by (...) an imposter or another patient with schizophrenia believes that “The Organization” painted the shops on a street in red and green to convey a message, these beliefs are not merely false or irrational. They are pathological. What makes delusions pathological? This paper explores the negative features because of which delusional beliefs are pathological. First, I critically examine the proposals according to which delusional beliefs are pathological because of (1) their strangeness, (2) their extreme irrationality, (3) their resistance to folk psychological explanations or (4) impaired responsibility-grounding capacities of people with them. I present some counterexamples as well as theoretical problems for these proposals. Then, I argue, following Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis of disorder, that delusional beliefs are pathological because they involve some sorts of harmful malfunctions. In other words, they have a significant negative impact on wellbeing (=harmful) and, in addition, some psychological mechanisms, directly or indirectly related to them, fail to perform the jobs for which they were selected in the past (=malfunctioning). An objection to the proposal is that delusional beliefs might not involve any malfunctions. For example, they might be playing psychological defence functions properly. Another objection is that a harmful malfunction is not sufficient for something to be pathological. For example, false beliefs might involve some malfunctions according to teleosemantics, a popular naturalist account of mental content, but harmful false beliefs do not have to be pathological. I examine those objections in detail and show that they should be rejected after all. (shrink)

I draw on neurobiological evidence to defend the rationalist thesis that moral judgments are essentially dependent on reasoning, not emotions (conceived as distinct from inference). The neuroscience reveals that moral cognition arises from domain-general capacities in the brain for inferring, in particular, the consequences of an agent’s action, the agent’s intent, and the rules or norms relevant to the context. Although these capacities entangle inference and affect, blurring the reason/emotion dichotomy doesn’t preferentially support sentimentalism. The argument requires careful consideration of (...) the empirical evidence (from neuroimaging to psychopathology) and philosophical analysis of the commitments of rationalism versus sentimentalism in ethics. (shrink)

Fregoli delusion is the mistaken belief that some person currently present in the deluded person's environment is a familiar person in disguise. The stranger is believed to be psychologically identical to this known person even though the deluded person perceives the physical appearance of the stranger as being different from the known person's typical appearance. To gain a deeper understanding of this contradictory error in the normal system for tracking and identifying known persons, we conducted a detailed survey of all (...) the Fregoli cases reported in the literature since the seminal Courbon and Fail paper. Our preliminary reading of these cases revealed a notable lack of definitional clarity. So, we first formulated a classification scheme of different person misidentification delusions so as to identify those cases that qualified as instances of Fregoli according to the above characterization: the mistaken belief that a known person is present in the environment in a different guise to his or her typical appearance. We identified 38 clear cases of this type and set out to answer a series of questions motivated by current hypotheses about the origin of the Fregoli delusion. We asked whether the patients misidentified particular strangers, made reference to the misidentified known persons using wigs or plastic surgery , misidentified many different strangers or only one, showed other symptoms , and made inferences about the motives of the known persons in disguise. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for current hypotheses concerning the origin of the Fregoli delusion. (shrink)

It’s a familiar fact that there is something it is like to see red, eat chocolate or feel pain. More recently philosophers have insisted that in addition to this objectual phenomenology there is something it is like for me to eat chocolate, and this for-me-ness is no less there than the chocolatishness. Recognizing this subjective feature of consciousness helps shape certain theories of consciousness, introspection and the self. Though it does this heavy philosophical work, and it is supposed to be (...) relatively obvious to anyone who introspects, it is rather difficult to see just what this phenomenal me-ness is supposed to be; indeed, many philosophers deny it exists. In this paper we try to provide a clear sense of what phenomenal me-ness involves, and then then consider some arguments for the existence of phenomenal me-ness experience as well as some accounts of what gives rise to it. In the end, we argue that the plausible senses of me-ness are a good deal thinner than what often seems to be claimed. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the role played by disturbed phenomenology in accounting for the formation and maintenance of the Capgras delusion. Whilst endorsing a two-stage model to explain the condition, I nevertheless argue that traditional accounts prioritise the role played by some form of second-stage cognitive disruption at the expense of the significant contribution made by the patient’s disturbed phenomenology, which is often reduced to such uninformative descriptions as “anomalous” or “strange”. By advocating an interactionist model, I argue that (...) the delusional belief constitutes an attempt on the part of the patient to explain his/her initially odd and somewhat disturbed phenomenal content and, moreover, that the delusion then structures the patient’s experience such that what he/she perceives is an impostor. This fact is used to explain the delusional belief’s maintenance and resistance to revision. Thus, whilst accepting that second-stage cognitive disruption has a part to play in explaining the Capgras delusion, the emphasis here is placed on the role played by the patient’s changing phenomenal content and its congruence with the delusional belief. Unlike traditional two-stage models, which posit a unidirectional progression from experience to belief, the interactionist model advocates a two-way interaction between bottom-up and top-down processes. The application of this model to other delusional beliefs is also considered. (shrink)

Metacognitive attitudes can affect behavior but do they do so, as Koriat claims, because they enhance voluntary control? This Commentary makes a case for saying that metacognitive consciousness may enhance not control but subjective predictability and may be best studied by examining not just healthy, well-integrated cognizers, but victims of multilevel mental disorders.

Explanations of Capgras delusion and prosopagnosia typically incorporate a dual-route approach to facial recognition in which a deficit in overt or covert processing in one condition is mirror-reversed in the other. Despite this double dissociation, experiences of either patient-group are often reported in the same way – as lacking a sense of familiarity toward familiar faces. In this paper, deficits in the facial processing of these patients are compared to other facial recognition pathologies, and their experiential characteristics mapped onto the (...) dual-route model in order to provide a less ambiguous link between facial processing and experiential content. The paper concludes that the experiential states of Capgras delusion, prosopagnosia, and related facial pathologies are quite distinct, and that this descriptive distinctiveness finds explanatory equivalence at the level of anatomical and functional disruption within the face recognition system. The role of skin conductance response as a measure of ‘familiarity’ is also clarified. (shrink)

Localizing the self in the brain has been the goal of consciousness research for centuries. Recently, there has been an increase in attention to the localization of the self. Here we present data from patients suffering from a loss of self in an attempt to understand the neural correlates of consciousness. Focusing on delusional misidentification syndrome , we find that frontal regions, as well as the right hemisphere appear to play a significant role in DMS and DMS related disorders. These (...) data are placed in the context of neuroimaging findings. (shrink)

One of the key challenges confronting cognitive science is to discover natural categories of cognitive function. Of special interest is the unity or diversity of cognitive control mechanisms. Evolutionary history is an underutilized resource that, together with neuropsychological and neuroscientific evidence, can help to provide a biological ground for the fractionation of cognitive control. Comparative evidence indicates that primate brain evolution has produced dissociable mechanisms for external action control and internal self-regulation, but that most real-world behaviors rely on a combination (...) of these. The archeological record further indicates the timing and context of distinctively human elaborations to these cognitive control functions, including the gradual emergence of increasingly complex hierarchical action control. (shrink)

I defend a moderate (neither extremely conservative nor extremely liberal) view about the contents of perception. I develop an account of perceptual kinds as perceptual similarity classes, which are convex regions in similarity space. Different perceivers will enjoy different perceptual kinds. I argue that for any property P, a perceptual state of O can represent something as P only if P is coextensive with some perceptual kind for O. 'Dog' and 'chair' will be perceptual kinds for most normal people, 'blackpool (...) warbler' for the expert birdwatcher but not for the rest of us, 'dangerous', 'familiar', or 'meaning that the cat is on the mat' for none of us. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze a type of externalist enactivism defended by Riccardo Manzotti. Such radical versions of enactivism are gaining more attention, especially in cognitive science and cognitive robotics. They are radical in that their notion of representation is purely referential, and content is conflated with reference. Manzotti follows in the footsteps of early causal theories of reference that had long been shown to be inadequate. It is commonly known that radical versions of externalism may lead to difficulties with (...) the notion of representation, especially if they cannot help themselves with the notion of syntax. I argue that a type of externalism present in Manzotti’s enactivism may well lead to anti-representationalism. (shrink)

In this paper we defend the doxastic conception of delusions against the metacognitive account developed by Greg Currie and collaborators. According to the metacognitive model, delusions are imaginings that are misidentified by their subjects as beliefs: the Capgras patient, for instance, does not believe that his wife has been replaced by a robot, instead, he merely imagines that she has, and mistakes this imagining for a belief. We argue that the metacognitive account is untenable, and that the traditional conception of (...) delusions as beliefs should be retained. (shrink)

Although delusions are typically regarded as beliefs of a certain kind, there have been worries about the doxastic conception of delusions since at least Bleuler’s time. ‘Anti-doxasticists,’ as we might call them, do not merely worry about the claim that delusions are beliefs, they reject it. Reimer’s paper weighs into the debate between ‘doxasticists’ and ‘anti-doxasticists’ by suggesting that one of the main arguments given against the doxastic conception of delusions—what we might call the functional role objection—is based on a (...) fallacy. She also draws attention to certain parallels between delusions and what she calls “nihilistic philosophical doctrines,” such as the skeptical position that we have no .. (shrink)

The paper discusses the role affective factors may play in explaining why, in Capgras'delusion, the delusional belief once formed is maintained and argues that there is an important link between the modularity of the relevant emotional system and the persistence of the delusional belief.

The Two Selves takes the position that the self is not a "thing" easily reduced to an object of scientific analysis. Rather, the self consists in a multiplicity of aspects, some of which have a neuro-cognitive basis (and thus are amenable to scientific inquiry) while other aspects are best construed as first-person subjectivity, lacking material instantiation. As a consequence of their potential immateriality, the subjective aspect of self cannot be taken as an object and therefore is not easily amenable to (...) treatment by current scientific methods. -/- Klein argues that to fully appreciate the self, its two aspects must be acknowledged, since it is only in virtue of their interaction that the self of everyday experience becomes a phenomenological reality. However, given their different metaphysical commitments (i.e., material and immaterial aspects of reality), a number of issues must be addressed. These include, but are not limited to, the possibility of interaction between metaphysically distinct aspects of reality, questions of causal closure under the physical, the principle of energy conservation. -/- After addressing these concerns, Klein presents evidence based on self-reports from case studies of individuals who suffer from a chronic or temporary loss of their sense of personal ownership of their mental states. Drawing on this evidence, he argues that personal ownership may be the factor that closes the metaphysical gap between the material and immaterial selves, linking these two disparate aspects of reality, thereby enabling us to experience a unified sense of self despite its underlying multiplicity. -/- . (shrink)

People cannot contemplate a proposition without believing that proposition. A model of belief fixation is sketched and used to explain hitherto disparate, recalcitrant, and somewhat mysterious psychological phenomena and philosophical paradoxes. Toward this end I also contend that our intuitive understanding of the workings of introspection is mistaken. In particular, I argue that propositional attitudes are beyond the grasp of our introspective capacities. We learn about our beliefs from observing our behavior, not from introspecting our stock beliefs. -/- The model (...) of belief fixation offered in the dissertation poses a novel dilemma for theories of rationality. One might have thought that the ability to contemplate ideas while withholding assent is a necessary condition on rationality. In short, it seems that rational creatures shouldn‘t just form their beliefs based on whatever they happen to think. However, it seems that we are creatures that automatically and reflexively form our beliefs based on whatever propositions we happen to consider. Thus, either the rational requirement that states that we must have evidence for our beliefs must be jettisoned or we must accept the conclusion that we are necessarily irrational. (shrink)

Functional intentionality is the dominant theory about how mental states come to have the content that they do. Phenomenal intentionality is an increasingly popular alternative to that orthodoxy, claiming that intentionality cannot be functionalized and that nothing is a mental state with intentional content unless it is phenomenally conscious. There is a consensus among defenders of phenomenal intentionality that the kind of phenomenology that is both necessary and sufficient for having a belief that "there is a tree in the quad" (...) is that the agent be consciously aware of the meaning of "tree" and "quad". On this theory, experiences with a valence -- experiences like happiness and sadness, satisfaction and frustration -- are irrelevant to intentionality. This paper challenges that assumption and considers several versions of "valent phenomenal intentionality" according to which a capacity for valent conscious experiences is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for intentionality (or both). (shrink)

We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. Any theory of art has to ideally have three components. The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or principles; The evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have the form that they do; What is the brain circuitry involved? Our paper begins with a quest for artistic universals and proposes a list of ‘Eight laws of artistic experience’ -- a (...) set of heuristics that artists either consciously or unconsciously deploy to optimally titillate the visual areas of the brain. One of these principles is a psychological phenomenon called the peak shift effect: If a rat is rewarded for discriminating a rectangle from a square, it will respond even more vigorously to a rectangle that is longer and skinnier that the prototype. We suggest that this principle explains not only caricatures, but many other aspects of art. Example: An evocative sketch of a female nude may be one which selectively accentuates those feminine form-attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male figure; a Boucher, a Van Gogh, or a Monet may be a caricature in ‘colour space’ rather than form space. Even abstract art may employ ‘supernormal’ stimuli to excite form areas in the brain more strongly than natural stimuli. Second, we suggest that grouping is a very basic principle. The different extrastriate visual areas may have evolved specifically to extract correlations in different domains , and discovering and linking multiple features into unitary clusters -- objects -- is facilitated and reinforced by direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. In general, when object-like entities are partially discerned at any stage in the visual hierarchy, messages are sent back to earlier stages to alert them to certain locations or features in order to look for additional evidence for the object . Finally, given constraints on allocation of attentional resources, art is most appealing if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension rather than redundant activation of multiple modules. This idea may help explain the effectiveness of outline drawings and sketches, the savant syndrome in autists, and the sudden emergence of artistic talent in fronto-temporal dementia. In addition to these three basic principles we propose five others, constituting a total of ‘eight laws of aesthetic experience’. (shrink)

The patient with Capgras’ syndrome claims that people very familiar to him have been replaced by impostors. I argue that this disorder is due to the destruction of a representation that the patient has of the mind of the familiar person. This creates the appearance of a familiar body and face, but without the familiar personality, beliefs, and thoughts. The posterior site of damage in Capgras’ is often reported to be the temporoparietal junction, an area that has a role in (...) the mindreading system, a connected system of cortical areas that allow us to attribute mental states to others. Just as the Capgras’ patient claims that that man is not his father, the patient with asomatognosia claims that his arm is not really his. A similar account applies here, in that a nearby brain area, the supramarginal gyrus, is damaged. This area works in concert with the temporoparietal junction and other areas to produce a large representation of a mind inside a body situated in an environment. Damage to the mind-representing part of this system (coupled with damage to executive processes in the prefrontal lobes) causes Capgras’ syndrome, whereas damage to the body-representing part of this system (also coupled with executive damage) causes asomatognosia. (shrink)

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia’. First, they are irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, or (...) feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome by using a ‘bridge’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one's sense of self. (shrink)