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  1. (1 other version)The skeptical import of motivated reasoning: A closer look at the evidence.Maarten van Doorn - 2023 - Thinking and Reasoning 1 (1):1-31.
    Central to many discussions of motivated reasoning is the idea that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity. Reasoning differently about information supporting our prior beliefs versus information contradicting those beliefs, is frequently equated with motivated irrationality. By analyzing the normative status of belief polarization, selective scrutiny, biased assimilation and the myside bias, I show this inference is often not adequately supported. Contrary to what’s often assumed, these phenomena need not indicate motivated irrationality, even though they are instances of belief-consistent information (...)
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  • Delusions and the Predictive Mind.Bongiorno Federico & Corlett Philip R. - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (4):1014-1029.
    A growing number of studies in both the scientific and the philosophical literature have drawn on a Bayesian predictive processing framework to account for the formation of delusions. The key here is that delusions form because of disrupted prediction error signalling. Parrott’s recent critique argues that the framework is incomplete in two respects: it leaves unclear why delusional hypotheses are selected over none at all or over more plausible alternatives; it leaves unclear how exactly it is that delusional hypotheses are (...)
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  • Signalling, commitment, and strategic absurdities.Daniel Williams - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (5):1011-1029.
    Why do well‐functioning psychological systems sometimes give rise to absurd beliefs that are radically misaligned with reality? Drawing on signalling theory, I develop and explore the hypothesis that groups often embrace beliefs that are viewed as absurd by outsiders as a means of signalling ingroup commitment. I clarify the game‐theoretic and psychological underpinnings of this hypothesis, I contrast it with similar proposals about the signalling functions of beliefs, and I motivate several psychological and sociological predictions that could be used to (...)
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  • Socially adaptive belief.Daniel Williams - 2020 - Mind and Language 36 (3):333-354.
    I clarify and defend the hypothesis that human belief formation is sensitive to social rewards and punishments, such that beliefs are sometimes formed based on unconscious expectations of their likely effects on other agents – agents who frequently reward us when we hold ungrounded beliefs and punish us when we hold reasonable ones. After clarifying this phenomenon and distinguishing it from other sources of bias in the psychological literature, I argue that the hypothesis is plausible on theoretical grounds and I (...)
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  • Biased belief in the Bayesian brain: A deeper look at the evidence.Ben M. Tappin & Stephen Gadsby - 2019 - Consciousness and Cognition 68 (C):107-114.
    A recent critique of hierarchical Bayesian models of delusion argues that, contrary to a key assumption of these models, belief formation in the healthy (i.e., neurotypical) mind is manifestly non-Bayesian. Here we provide a deeper examination of the empirical evidence underlying this critique. We argue that this evidence does not convincingly refute the assumption that belief formation in the neurotypical mind approximates Bayesian inference. Our argument rests on two key points. First, evidence that purports to reveal the most damning violation (...)
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  • Predictive coding and thought.Daniel Williams - 2020 - Synthese 197 (4):1749-1775.
    Predictive processing has recently been advanced as a global cognitive architecture for the brain. I argue that its commitments concerning the nature and format of cognitive representation are inadequate to account for two basic characteristics of conceptual thought: first, its generality—the fact that we can think and flexibly reason about phenomena at any level of spatial and temporal scale and abstraction; second, its rich compositionality—the specific way in which concepts productively combine to yield our thoughts. I consider two strategies for (...)
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  • (1 other version)Misinformation, observational equivalence and the possibility of rationality.Maarten van Doorn - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.
    In vice epistemology, bad epistemic outcomes, such as maintaining false beliefs, are interpreted as indicators of blameworthy irrationality. Conversely, a growing trend in philosophical psychology advocates for environmentalist explanations, suggesting these outcomes emerge because rational cognitive processes of faultless individuals falter due to polluted environmental inputs. Building on concrete examples, I first offer a systematic analysis of the relative explanatory merits of that environmentalist project. I then use this analysis to advance the rationality debate, which has recently been identified as (...)
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  • Stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies in the Bayesian brain.Daniel Https://Orcidorg624X Villiger - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Stereotypes are often described as being generally inaccurate and irrational. However, for years, a minority of social psychologists has been proclaiming that stereotype accuracy is among the most robust findings in the field. This same minority also opposes the majority by questioning the power of self-fulfilling prophecies and thereby the construction of social reality. The present paper examines this long-standing debate from the perspective of predictive processing, an increasingly influential cognitive science theory. In this theory, stereotype accuracy and self-fulfilling prophecies (...)
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  • Testable or bust: theoretical lessons for predictive processing.Marcin Miłkowski & Piotr Litwin - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-18.
    The predictive processing account of action, cognition, and perception is one of the most influential approaches to unifying research in cognitive science. However, its promises of grand unification will remain unfulfilled unless the account becomes theoretically robust. In this paper, we focus on empirical commitments of PP, since they are necessary both for its theoretical status to be established and for explanations of individual phenomena to be falsifiable. First, we argue that PP is a varied research tradition, which may employ (...)
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  • Is the biological adaptiveness of delusions doomed?Eugenia Lancellotta - 2022 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (1):47-63.
    Delusions are usually considered as harmful and dysfunctional beliefs, one of the primary symptoms of a psychiatric illness and the mark of madness in popular culture. However, in recent times a much more positive role has been advocated for delusions. More specifically, it has been argued that delusions might be an answer to a problem rather than problems in themselves. By delivering psychological and epistemic benefits, delusions would allow people who face severe biological or psychological difficulties to survive in their (...)
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  • Unification by Fiat: Arrested Development of Predictive Processing.Piotr Litwin & Marcin Miłkowski - 2020 - Cognitive Science 44 (7):e12867.
    Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains only loosely connected both to its computational framework and to its hypothetical biological underpinnings, which makes its fundamentals unclear. Instead of offering explanations that refer to the same set of (...)
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  • Individual differences in the effects of priors on perception: A multi-paradigm approach.Kadi Tulver, Jaan Aru, Renate Rutiku & Talis Bachmann - 2019 - Cognition 187 (C):167-177.
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  • Motivated ignorance, rationality, and democratic politics.Daniel Williams - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7807-7827.
    When the costs of acquiring knowledge outweigh the benefits of possessing it, ignorance is rational. In this paper I clarify and explore a related but more neglected phenomenon: cases in which ignorance is motivated by the anticipated costs of possessing knowledge, not acquiring it. The paper has four aims. First, I describe the psychological and social factors underlying this phenomenon of motivated ignorance. Second, I describe those conditions in which it is instrumentally rational. Third, I draw on evidence from the (...)
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  • Epistemic Irrationality in the Bayesian Brain.Daniel Williams - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (4):913-938.
    A large body of research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience draws on Bayesian statistics to model information processing within the brain. Many theorists have noted that this research seems to be in tension with a large body of experimental results purportedly documenting systematic deviations from Bayesian updating in human belief formation. In response, proponents of the Bayesian brain hypothesis contend that Bayesian models can accommodate such results by making suitable assumptions about model parameters. To make progress in this debate, I (...)
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  • Delusional Predictions and Explanations.Matthew Parrott - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (1):325-353.
    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 (...)
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  • Prospection does not imply predictive processing.Piotr Litwin & Marcin Miłkowski - 2020 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43.
    Predictive processing models of psychopathologies are not explanatorily consistent with the present account of abstract thought. These models are based on latent variables probabilistically mapping the structure of the world. As such, they cannot be informed by representational ontology based on mental objects and states. What actually is the case is merely some terminological affinity between subjective and informational uncertainty.
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  • (1 other version)The skeptical import of motivated reasoning: a closer look at the evidence.Maarten van Doorn - 2024 - Thinking and Reasoning 30 (4):548-578.
    Central to many discussions of motivated reasoning is the idea that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity. Reasoning differently about information supporting our prior beliefs versus information contradicting those beliefs, is frequently equated with motivated irrationality. By analyzing the normative status of belief polarization, selective scrutiny, biased assimilation and the myside bias, I show this inference is often not adequately supported. Contrary to what’s often assumed, these phenomena need not indicate motivated irrationality, even though they are instances of belief-consistent information (...)
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