Delusions are defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. However, in the empirical literature, delusions have been found to have some psychological benefits. One proposal is that some delusions defuse negative emotions and protect one from low self-esteem by allowing motivational influences on belief formation. In this paper I focus on delusions that have been construed as playing a defensive function (motivated delusions) and argue that some of their psychological benefits can convert into epistemic ones. Notwithstanding their epistemic costs, (...) motivated delusions also have potential epistemic benefits for agents who have faced adversities, undergone physical or psychological trauma, or are subject to negative emotions and low self-esteem. To account for the epistemic status of motivated delusions, costly and beneficial at the same time, I introduce the notion of epistemic innocence. A delusion is epistemically innocent when adopting it delivers a significant epistemic benefit, and the benefit could not be attained if the delusion were not adopted. The analysis leads to a novel account of the status of delusions by inviting a reflection on the relationship between psychological and epistemic benefits. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the costs and benefits of confabulation, focusing on the type of confabulation people engage in when they offer explanations for their attitudes and choices. What makes confabulation costly? In the philosophical literature confabulation is thought to undermine claims to self-knowledge. I argue that when people confabulate they do not necessarily fail at mental-state self-attributions, but offer ill-grounded explanations which often lead to the adoption of other ill-grounded beliefs. What, if anything, makes confabulation beneficial? As people (...) are unaware of the information that would make their explanations accurate, they are not typically in a position to acknowledge their ignorance or provide better-grounded explanations for their attitudes and choices. In such cases, confabulating can have some advantages over offering no explanation because it makes a distinctive contribution to people’s sense of themselves as competent and largely coherent agents. This role of ill-grounded explanations could not be as easily played by better-grounded explanations should these be available. In the end, I speculate about the implications of this conclusion for attempting to eliminate or reduce confabulation. (shrink)

Purpose of review: What is the relationship between rationality and mental health? By considering the psychological literature on depressive realism and unrealistic optimism it was hypothesized that, in the context of judgments about the self, accurate cognitions are psychologically maladaptive and inaccurate cognitions are psychologically adaptive. Recent studies recommend being cautious in drawing any general conclusion about style of thinking and mental health. Recent findings: Recent investigations suggest that people with depressive symptoms are more accurate than controls in tasks involving (...) time perception and estimates of personal circumstances, but not in other tasks. Unrealistic optimism remains a robust phenomenon across a variety of tasks and domains, and researchers are starting to explore its neural bases. However, the challenge is to determine to what extent and in what way unrealistic optimism is beneficial. Summary: We should revisit the hypothesis that optimistic cognitions are psychologically adaptive, whereas realistic thinking is not. Realistic beliefs and expectations can be conducive to wellbeing and good functioning, and wildly optimistic cognitions have considerable psychological costs. (shrink)

Letheby’s book is an engaging and crystal-clear exploration of the philosophical issues raised by the use of psychedelic drugs. In this paper, we focus on the epistemological issues Letheby examines in chapter 8 and argue that his analysis requires an agency-first approach to epistemic evaluation. On an agency-first approach, epistemic evaluation is about identifying the skills agents needs to acquire in order to pursue and fulfil their epistemic goals.

In this paper we address the ethics of adopting delusional beliefs and we apply consequentialist and deontological considerations to the epistemic evaluation of delusions. Delusions are characterised by their epistemic shortcomings and they are often defined as false and irrational beliefs. Despite this, when agents are overwhelmed by negative emotions due to the effects of trauma or previous adversities, or when they are subject to anxiety and stress as a result of hypersalient experience, the adoption of a delusional belief can (...) prevent a serious epistemic harm from occurring. For instance, delusions can allow agents to remain in touch with their environment overcoming the disruptive effect of negative emotions and anxiety. Moreover, agents are not blameworthy for adopting their delusions if their ability to believe otherwise is compromised. There is evidence suggesting that no evidence-related action that would counterfactually lead them to believe otherwise is typically available to them. The lack of ability to believe otherwise, together with some other conditions, implies that the agents are not blameworthy for their delusions. The examination of the epistemic status of delusions prompts us to acknowledge the complexity and contextual nature of epistemic evaluation, establish connections between consequentialist and deontological frameworks in epistemology, and introduce the notion of epistemic innocence into the vocabulary of epistemic evaluation. (shrink)

Here I reply to the main points raised by the commentators on the arguments put forward in my Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP, 2009). My response is aimed at defending a modest doxastic account of clinical delusions, and is articulated in three sections. First, I consider the view that delusions are inbetween perceptual and doxastic states, defended by Jacob Hohwy and Vivek Rajan, and the view that delusions are failed attempts at believing or not-quitebeliefs, proposed by Eric Schwitzgebel and (...) Maura Tumulty. Then, I address the relationship between the doxastic account of delusions and the role, nature, and prospects of folk psychology, which is discussed by Dominic Murphy, Keith Frankish, and Maura Tumulty in their contributions. In the final remarks, I turn to the continuity thesis and suggest that, although there are important differences between clinical delusions and non-pathological beliefs, these differences cannot be characterised satisfactorily in epistemic terms. (shrink)

In psychiatry some disorders of cognition are distinguished from instances of normal cognitive functioning and from other disorders in virtue of their surface features rather than in virtue of the underlying mechanisms responsible for their occurrence. Aetiological considerations often cannot play a significant classificatory and diagnostic role, because there is no sufficient knowledge or consensus about the causal history of many psychiatric disorders. Moreover, it is not always possible to uniquely identify a pathological behaviour as the symptom of a certain (...) disorder, as disorders that are likely to differ both in their causal histories and in their overall manifestations may give rise to very similar patterns of behaviour. -/- Consider delusions as an example. It wouldn’t be correct to define delusions as those beliefs people form as a result of a neurobiological deficit and a hypothesis-evaluation deficit (as some versions of the two-factor theory of delusions suggest), because for some delusions no neurobiological deficit may be found, and reasoning biases and motivational factors may be contributors to the formation of the delusion (e.g. McKay et al., 2005). Moreover, it would be a mistake to define delusions as symptoms of schizophrenia alone, because they occur also in other disorders, including dementia, amnesia, and delusional disorders. Thus, aetiological considerations may appear in the description and analysis of delusions, but do not feature prominently in their definition. -/- In this paper I argue that the surface features used as criteria for the classification and diagnosis of disorders of cognition are often epistemic in character. I shall offer two examples: confabulations and delusions are defined as beliefs or narratives that fail to meet standards of accuracy and justification. Although classifications and diagnoses based on features of people’s observable behaviour are necessary at these early stages of neuropsychiatric research, given the variety of conditions in which certain phenomena appear, I shall attempt to show that current epistemic accounts of confabulations and delusions have limitations. Epistemic criteria can guide both research and clinical practice, but fail to provide sufficient conditions for the identification of delusions and confabulations, and fail to demarcate pathological from non-pathological narratives or beliefs. -/- Another limitation of current epistemic accounts – which I shall not address here – is the excessive focus on epistemic faults of confabulations and delusions at the expense of their epistemically neutral or advantageous features (see Bortolotti and Cox, 2009). This may lead to a misconception of delusions and confabulations, and to an oversimplification in the assessment of the needs of people who require clinical treatment for their psychotic symptoms. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension in current accounts of the relationship between reason giving and self knowledge. On the one hand, philosophers like Richard Moran (2001) claim that deliberation and justification can give rise to first-person authority over the attitudes that subjects form or defend on the basis of what they take to be their best reasons. On the other hand, the psychological evidence on the introspection effects and the literature on elusive reasons suggest that engaging in explicit deliberation or (...) justification leads subjects to report attitudes that are not consistent with their previous attitudes or with their future behavior. On the basis of these findings, Tim Wilson (2002) argues that analyzing reasons compromises self knowledge. I shall defend a realistic account of the effects of reason giving which is compatible with the empirical findings on introspection and also with the claim that deliberation and justification have epistemic benefits. (shrink)

This paper gives two complete and elementary proofs that if the speed of light over closed paths has a universal value c, then it is possible to synchronize clocks in such a way that the one-way speed of light is c. The first proof is an elementary version of a recent proof. The second provides high precision experimental evidence that it is possible to synchronize clocks in such a way that the one-way speed of light has a universal value. We (...) also discuss an old incomplete proof by Weyl which is important from an historical perspective. (shrink)

In this paper I consider some issues concerning cognitive enhancements and the ethics of enhancing in reproduction and parenting. I argue that there are moral reasons to enhance the cognitive capacities of the children one has, or of the children one is going to have, and that these enhancements should not be seen as an alternative to pursuing important changes in society that might also improve one’s own and one’s children’s life. It has been argued that an emphasis on enhancing (...) cognitive capacities might encourage the commodification of children. But this objection seems misplaced. The reasons why one decides to reproduce can be subject to moral approbation or condemnation, as such rea-sons might be indicators of the quality of one’s parenting and the happiness of the future persons one is committed to bringing to life. However, once the decision to reproduce is made, no further harm comes from taking as few risks as possible on behalf of the persons to whom one is giving life with their health, character and cognitive capacities. (shrink)

In philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive science, definitions of clinical delusions are not based on the mechanisms responsible for the formation of delusions. Some of the defining features of delusions are epistemic and focus on whether delusions are true, justified, or rational, as in the definition of delusions as fixed beliefs that are badly supported by evidence). Other defining features of delusions are psychological and they focus on whether delusions are harmful, as in the definition of delusions as beliefs that disrupt (...) good functioning. Even if the epistemic features go some way towards capturing what otherwise different instances of clinical delusions have in common, they do not succeed in distinguishing delusions as a clinical phenomenon from everyday irrational beliefs. Focusing on the psychological features is a more promising way to mark the difference between clinical and non-clinical irrational beliefs, but there is wide variability in the extent to which delusions are psychologically harmful, and some everyday irrational beliefs can affect functioning in similarly negative ways. In this chapter we consider three types of belief that share similar epistemic features and exhibit variation with respect to how psychologically harmful they are: (1) delusions of thought insertion, (2) alien abduction beliefs, and (3) self-enhancing beliefs. In the light of the similarities and differences between these cases, we highlight the difficulty in providing an answer to what makes an irrational belief delusional. (shrink)

Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for some memory errors are adaptive, bringing benefits to the organism. In this paper we argue that the same cognitive mechanisms also bring a suite of significant epistemic benefits, increasing the chance of an agent obtaining epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge. This result provides a significant challenge to the folk conception of memory beliefs that are false, according to which they are a sign of cognitive frailty, indicating (...) that a person is less reliable than others or their former self. Evidence of memory errors can undermine a person’s view of themselves as a competent epistemic agent, but we show that false memory beliefs can be the result of the ordinary operation of cognitive mechanisms found across the species, which bring substantial epistemic benefits. This challenge to the folk conception is not adequately captured by existing epistemological theories. However, it can be captured by the notion of epistemic innocence, which has previously been deployed to highlight how beliefs which have epistemic costs can also bring significant epistemic benefits. We therefore argue that the notion of epistemic innocence should be expanded so that it applies not just to beliefs but also to cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

In this paper we have two main aims. First, we present an account of mood-congruent delusions in depression (hereafter, depressive delusions). We propose that depressive delusions constitute acknowledgements of self-related beliefs acquired as a result of a negatively biased learning process. Second, we argue that depressive delusions have the potential for psychological and epistemic benefits despite their obvious epistemic and psychological costs. We suggest that depressive delusions play an important role in preserving a person’s overall coherence and narrative identity at (...) a critical time, and thus can be regarded as epistemically innocent. (shrink)

In this chapter we argue that some beliefs present a problem for the truth-aim teleological account of belief, according to which it is constitutive of belief that it is aimed at truth. We draw on empirical literature which shows that subjects form beliefs about the real world when they read fictional narratives, even when those narratives are presented as fiction, and subjects are warned that the narratives may contain falsehoods. We consider Nishi Shah’s teleologist’s dilemma and a response to it (...) from Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen which appeals to weak truth regulation as a feature common to all belief. We argue that beliefs from fiction indicate that there is not a basic level of truth regulation common to all beliefs, and thus the teleologist’s dilemma remains. We consider two objections to our argument. First, that the attitudes gained through reading fiction are not beliefs, and thus teleologists are not required to account for them in their theory. We respond to this concern by defending a doxastic account of the attitudes gained from fiction. Second, that these beliefs are in fact appropriately truth-aimed, insofar as readers form beliefs upon what they take to be author testimony. We respond to this concern by suggesting that the conditions under which one can form justified beliefs upon testimony are not met in the cases we discuss. Lastly, we gesture towards a teleological account grounded in biological function, which is not vulnerable to our argument. We conclude that beliefs from fiction present a problem for the truth-aim teleological account of belief. (shrink)

Understood in their historical context, current debates about psychiatric classification, prompted by the publication of the DSM-5, open up new opportunities for improved translational research in psychiatry. In this paper, we draw lessons for translational research from three time slices of 20th century psychiatry. From the first time slice, 1913 and the publication of Jaspers’ General Psychopathology, the lesson is that translational research in psychiatry requires a pluralistic approach encompassing equally the sciences of mind (including the social sciences) and of (...) brain. From the second time slice, 1953 and a conference in New York from which our present symptom-based classifications are derived, the lesson is that, while reliability remains the basis of psychiatry as an observational science, validity too is essential to effective translation. From the third time slice, 1997 and a conference on psychiatric classification in Dallas that brought together patients and carers with researchers and clinicians, the lesson is that we need to build further on collaborative models of research combining expertise-by-training with expertise-by-experience. This is important if we are to meet the specific challenges to translation presented by the complexity of the concept of mental disorder, particularly as reflected in the diversity of desired treatment outcomes. Taken together, these three lessons – a pluralistic approach, reliability and validity, and closer collaboration – provide an emerging framework for more effective translation of research into practice in 21st century psychiatry. (shrink)

In this chapter, our focus is the role played by notions of rationality in the diagnosis of mental disorders, and in the practice of overriding patient autonomy in psychiatry. We describe and evaluate different hypotheses concerning the relationship between rationality and diagnosis, raising questions about what features underpin psychiatric categories. These questions reinforce widely held concerns about the use of diagnosis as a justification for overriding autonomy, which have motivated a shift to mental incapacity as an alternative justification. However, this (...) approach too has recently been criticized from a mental disability rights perspective. Our analysis of the relationship between mental capacity and rationality is used to illuminate these concerns, and to investigate further the relationship between rationality and psychiatric diagnosis. (shrink)

Bortolotti argues that the irrationality of many delusions is no different in kind from the irrationality that marks many non-pathological states typically treated as beliefs. She takes this to secure the doxastic status of those delusions. Bortolotti’s approach has many benefits. For example, it accounts for the fact that we can often make some sense of what deluded subjects are up to, and helps explain why some deluded subjects are helped by cognitive behavioral therapy. But there is an (...) alternative approach that secures the same benefits as Bortolotti’s account while bringing additional benefits. The alternative approach treats both many delusions and many of the non-pathological states to which Bortolotti compares them as in-between states. Subjects in in-between states don’t fully believe the beliefs which it is sometimes convenient to ascribe to them. This alternative approach to belief and belief-ascription fits well with an independently attractive account of the varied purposes of our ordinary attitude ascriptions. It also makes it easier to make fine-grained distinctions between intentional attitudes of different kinds. (shrink)

Bortolotti argues that we cannot distinguish delusions from other irrational beliefs in virtue of their epistemic features alone. Although her arguments are convincing, her analysis leaves an important question unanswered: What makes delusions pathological? In this paper I set out to answer this question by arguing that the pathological character of delusions arises from an executive dysfunction in a subject’s ability to detect relevance in the environment. I further suggest that this dysfunction derives from an underlying emotional imbalance—one that (...) leads delusional subjects to regard some contextual elements as deeply puzzling or highly significant. (shrink)

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.

Lisa Bortolotti (2010), Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs. Oxford University Press. (Pp. xvii 299. Price L41.99).

How do we live, then, so that all of nature bows down and we are in despair? “We wanted to change the world and the world changed us", says Nino Manfredi in Ettore Scola's film, C'eravamo tanto amati, something so expressive of this vital mode that dominates us. But to try not to be transformed by what we live seems impossible, even unfortunate, because a man always lives in his present, and in doing so lives with his fellow men. (...) Only in this way is it possible to live in a political society, to create a public sphere. Politics is born of sharing together, of words and deeds, as Hannah Arendt reminds us (3). (shrink)

¿Cómo vivimos, pues, para que toda la naturaleza se doblegue y estemos en la desazón? "Queríamos cambiar el mundo y el mundo nos cambió a nosotros”, dice Nino Manfredi en la película de Ettore Scola, C'eravamo tanto amati, algo tan expresivo de este modo vital que nos domina. Pero aspirar a que no nos transforme lo que vivimos parece imposible, incluso desafortunado, ya que un hombre vive siempre en su presente, y al hacerlo habita con sus semejantes. Sólo así (...) es posible vivir en una sociedad política, hacer una esfera pública. La política nace de compartir juntos, palabras y actos, nos recuerda Hannah Arendt (3). (shrink)

One of the leading and central figures in research on delusions, Max Coltheart, presents and summarises his heretofore work in a short text. Miyazono and Bortolotti present an interesting argument aimed at the charges against the doxastic concept of delusions. Adams, Brown and Friston showcase a predictive-Bayesian concept of delusions. Young criticizes the current changes in the two-factor account of delusions and argues that the role of experience should not be dismissed within it. Kapusta presents an interesting, phenomenological approach (...) to delusions, rooted in the classic works of Karl Jaspers. In the last article, Carruthers takes a look at delusions from a different perspective. He uses them in order to show the weakness of the sense of agency concept as proposed by Wegner. The issue also contains an interview with Jakob Hohwy. In Hohwy’s still-recent book, we can find an interesting, predictive approach to delusions. Hohwy points towards the unobvious connections between delusions and illusions. (shrink)

A lo largo de la tradición psicopatológica, incluso de la pre-fenomenológica, se encuentra la categorización del delirio como creencia. Jaspers asumió ese uso y lo fundó fenomenológico-existencialmente, definiendo su carácter de convicción. El concepto de creencia ha tenido un largo recorrido dentro de la historia del pensamiento, aunque recientemente se ha intensificado el debate acerca de la visión doxástica del delirio. En virtud de lo ya mencionado, en el presente artículo presentamos un análisis conceptual de la creencia, con el objetivo (...) de identificar de manera precisa los aspectos esenciales que permiten al delirio definirse según ella. De esta manera, se discutirán algunas de las principales incursiones realizadas en el concepto desde la antigüedad periplatónica hasta José Ortega y Gasset, remarcando en cada pensador las directrices esenciales de su aproximación a la creencia. A su vez, introducir al filósofo español al debate psicopatológico permitirá incluir en la discusión dos aspectos importantes que creemos pueden ser fructíferos para la discusión filosófica sobre el delirio: la diferencia entre ideas y creencias, y la vitalidad de estas últimas. Finalmente, hacemos referencia al actual debate pro- y antidoxástico, haciendo hincapié en la necesidad de considerar la amplitud del concepto de creencia en su genealogía histórica. Con base en ello estaríamos en condición de acercarnos a la visión doxástica moderada que han defendido autoras como Lisa Bortolotti. (shrink)

This book is a collection of all the papers and the essay published in the special issue “Philosophy and Meaning in Life Vol.3,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.11, No.1, 2021, pp.1-154. We held the Third International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life online at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, on July 21–23, 2020. This conference was co-hosted by the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion, and the Waseda Institute of Life and Death Studies. We accepted about 50 (...) presentations from around the world. Professor Lisa Bortolotti and I gave keynote lectures. After the conference, we called for papers for publication from the speakers, and we accepted seven papers and an essay for the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life. We would like to give special thanks to the anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the submitted manuscripts. The accepted papers deal with a variety of topics, such as the subjective/objective debate, narrative meaning, Simone de Beauvoir, and Alain Badiou, and they are all discussed from the perspective of the philosophy of meaning in life. (shrink)

The imperviousness of delusions to counter-evidence makes it tempting to classify them as imaginings. Bayne and Pacherie argue that adopting a dispositional account of belief can secure the doxastic status of delusions. But dispositionalism can only secure genuinely doxastic status for mental states by giving folk-psychological norms a significant role in the individuation of attitudes. When such norms individuate belief, deluded subjects will not count as believing their delusions. In general, dispositionalism won't confer genuinely doxastic status more often than do (...) competing accounts of belief. (shrink)