From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, how are we to explain the routine exceptions to this rule? How can we account for mistaken beliefs, bizarre delusions, and instances of self-deception? We explore this question in some detail. We begin by articulating a distinction between two general types of misbelief: those resulting from a breakdown in (...) the normal functioning of the belief formation system (e.g., delusions) and those arising in the normal course of that system's operations (e.g., beliefs based on incomplete or inaccurate information). The former are instances of biological dysfunction or pathology, reflecting “culpable” limitations of evolutionary design. Although the latter category includes undesirable (but tolerable) by-products of “forgivably” limited design, our quarry is a contentious subclass of this category: misbeliefs best conceived as design features. Such misbeliefs, unlike occasional lucky falsehoods, would have been systematically adaptive in the evolutionary past. Such misbeliefs, furthermore, would not be reducible to judicious – but doxastically1noncommittal – action policies. Finally, such misbeliefs would have been adaptive in themselves, constituting more than mere by-products of adaptively biased misbelief-producing systems. We explore a range of potential candidates for evolved misbelief, and conclude that, of those surveyed, onlypositive illusionsmeet our criteria. (shrink)

Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on Delusions.

This chapter connects the phenomenon of double bookkeeping to two critical debates in the philosophy of delusion: one from the analytic tradition and one from the phenomenological tradition. First, I will show how the failure of action guidance on the part of some delusions suggests an argument to the standard view that delusions are beliefs (doxasticism about delusion) and how its proponents have countered it by ascribing behavioral inertia to avolition, emotional disturbances, or a failure of the surrounding environment in (...) supporting the agent’s motivation to act. Second, I will show how the mismatch between the experience of double bookkeeping and that of having the usual propositional attitudes of folk psychology suggests another, more recalcitrant argument not only against doxasticism but against the very attempt to fit delusion into folk psychology. Third, I will show how phenomenologically inspired theories of delusion, such as the multiple realities hypothesis, bypass the debates above and focus on describing and understanding the disturbances in the structure of experience undergone by patients. I conclude that the philosophical discussions ensuing from an appreciation of double bookkeeping show some of the limitations of the analytic philosophical approach to delusion. (shrink)

This chapter considers the nature of imagination and belief, exploring how deeply these two states of mind differ. It first addresses a range of cognitive and motivational differences between imagination and belief which suggest that they're fundamentally different states of mind. Then it addresses imaginative immersion, delusions, and the different norms we apply to the two mental states, which some theorists regard as providing support for a more unified picture of imagination and belief.

After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...) practical reason or their stunted emotions that are at fault. The evidence supports both explanations. I conclude with an overview of the debate concerning whether they are morally or legally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

How shall we distinguish religious delusion from sane religious belief? Making this determination is not usually found to be difficult in clinical practice – but what shall be our theoretical rationale? Attempts to answer this question often try to provide differentiating principles by which the religious “sheep” may be separated from the delusional “goats.” As we shall see, none of these attempts work. We may, however, ask whether the assumption underlying the search for a differentiating principle – that religious beliefs (...) and religious delusions can usefully be considered species of a common genus – is a good one. In this paper, we outline an alternative, “disjunctive,” understanding of religious belief and religious delusion. By reminding ourselves both of what is central to any delusion and of what distinguishes bona fide religious claims from their pretenders, we show how to resolve our reflective puzzlement about religious delusion without recourse to differentiating principles. (shrink)

Imbalanced plasticity of neural networks in the brain is proposed to underlie deficits in the integration of efferent and afferent processes in schizophrenia. These deficits affect the priming of the behavior implementing systems by prior knowledge, and thus impair both controlled regulation and automatic activation of mental and motor processes. The sense of self as a distinct entity can consequently be undermined. In predominantly reality-distorting patients, hypo-plasticity of neural connectivity may cause the emergence of highly focused but inflexible patterns of (...) activation in their representation and response systems. This may lead to dominance of prepotent patterns of activity in these systems and a relative inability of higher control systems to bias lower level activity towards congruence with the ongoing cognitive and motor context. By contrast, predominantly disorganized patients are characterized by hyper-plastic connectivity. This leads to a weakening of prepotent response tendencies but also, as in reality-distorting patients, to less effective top-down contextual constraining. (shrink)

: The notion of a delusion occupies a central place in psychotherapy. The presence of delusional thinking in a patient is often regarded as indicative of psychosis. And yet, the nature of a delusion is still widely disputed. The difficulty of defining a delusion has proved so difficult that some prominent authors have declared the task impossible. The aim of this paper is to offer a characterisation of delusional systems of thought. In this paper is argued that delusions, unlike scientific (...) explanations and the explanations generally offered by common sense, fail to minimise that which requires explanation. In the first part of the paper, difficulties with extant accounts will be discussed. In the following parts, the author’s own account of delusional thoughts will be developed and some difficult cases considered. It will be argued that delusions differ from more typical beliefs in the number of things that they leave unexplained. Delusions, unlike those beliefs we typically see as rational, bring about an increase in the number of things requiring explanation. Keywords: Delusions; Epistemology; Analysis; Explanation; Rationality Aspetti epistemologici del pensiero delirante Riassunto: La nozione di delirio occupa una posizione centrale nell’ambito della psicoterapia. La presenza del pensiero delirante in un paziente è considerata spesso come un indice di psicosi. E, tuttavia, la natura del delirio non è ancora oggetto di ampio accordo tra gli studiosi. La difficoltà nel definire il delirio si è mostrata talmente ostica che diversi importanti studiosi hanno dichiarato questo compito impossibile. Lo scopo di questo lavoro è quello di offrire una caratterizzazione dei sistemi di pensiero delirante. Si sosterrà che i deliri, diversamente dalle spiegazioni scientifiche e da quelle offerte generalmente dal senso comune, non riescono a ridurre quanto necessita di una spiegazione. Nella prima parte del lavoro, saranno discusse le difficoltà degli approcci correnti. Nelle parti seguenti verrà proposto l’approccio dell’autore ai pensieri deliranti e verranno presi in esame alcuni casi complessi. Si sosterrà che i deliri si distinguono dai casi più tipici di credenza per il numero di cose che lasciano senza spiegazione. I deliri, diversamente dalle credenze che tipicamente consideriamo irrazionali, determinano un incremento del numero di cose che richiedono una spiegazione. Parole chiave: Delirio; Epistemologia; Analisi; Spiegazione; Razionalità. (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)

Our behavior doesn't always match the beliefs attributed to us, and sometimes the mismatch raises questions about what our beliefs actually are. I compare two approaches to such cases, and argue in favor of the one which allows some belief-attributions to lack a determinate truth-value. That approach avoids an inappropriate assumption about cognitive activity: namely, that whenever we fail in performing one cognitive activity, there is a distinct cognitive activity at which we succeed. The indeterminacy-allowing approach also meshes well with (...) an attractive view of folk-psychology: that ascriptions can help shape the attitudes they report. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and analyze arguments provided for the Psychological Principle of Non-Contradiction which states that one cannot have, or cannot be described as having, contradictory beliefs. By differentiating two possible interpretations of PNC, descriptive and normative, and examining arguments provided for each of them separately I point out the flaws in reasoning in these arguments and difficulties with aligning PNC with the empirical data provided by research done in cognitive and clinical psychology. I claim (...) that PNC cannot be derived from any metaphysical stance regarding the mental phenomena and that having contradictory beliefs should be regarded as possible. Furthermore, I argue that interpreting a subject as having contradictory beliefs, and therefore abandoning PNC, can be more effective in explaining the phenomena of contradictory beliefs and irrational behaviour than solutions consistent with the PNC. (shrink)

Celem tego tekstu jest rekonstrukcja i analiza argumentów przedstawianych za Psychologiczną Zasadą Niesprzeczności, stwierdzającą, że żaden podmiot nie może mieć sprzecznych przekonań lub być opisany jako posiadający sprzeczne przekonania. Poprzez rozróżnienie dwóch możliwych interpretacji PZN, deskryptywnej i normatywnej, oraz dokładne zbadanie argumentacji przedstawionej dla każdej z nich z osobna, wskazuję zawarte w nich błędy oraz problemy związane z uzgodnieniem ich z wynikami badań prowadzonych w psychologii poznawczej i klinicznej. Uzasadniam, dlaczego PZN nie może być wyprowadzona z żadnego ze stanowisk metafizycznych (...) dotyczących nastawień sądzeniowych i że posiadanie sprzecznych przekonań powinno być uznane za możliwe. Następnie piszę, dlaczego zinterpretowanie niektórych podmiotów jako posiadających sprzeczne przekonania może być bardziej efektywne w wyjaśnianiu przypadków nieracjonalnego zachowania niż rozwiązania zgodne z PZN. (shrink)

An examination of alien abduction belief can inform how we ought to approach constructing explanations of monothematic delusion formation. I argue that the formation and maintenance of alien abduction beliefs can be explained by a one-factor account, and that this explanatory power generalizes to (other) cases of monothematic delusions. There are no differences between alien abduction beliefs and monothematic delusions which indicate the need for additional explanatory factors in cases of the latter. I make the additional point that whilst alien (...) abduction beliefs can be readily explained using a one-factor framework, the two-factor framework requires adjustment to accommodate them. I conclude that theorists interested in delusion formation have much to learn from the case of alien abduction belief. (shrink)

I propose a new model of implicit bias, according to which implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings. I begin by endorsing a principle of parsimony when confronted with unfamiliar phenomena. I introduce implicit bias in terms congenial to what most philosophers and psychologists have said about their nature in the literature so far, before moving to a discussion of the doxastic model of implicit bias and objections to it. I then introduce unconscious imagination and argue that appeal to it (...) does not represent a departure from a standard view of imagination, before outlining my model and showing how it accommodates characteristic features of implicit bias. I argue for its advantages over the doxastic model: it does not violate the parsimony principle, it does not face any of the objections so far raised to doxasticism, and it can accommodate the heterogeneity in the category of implicit bias. Finally, I address whether my view limits our ability to hold people accountable for their biases (it does not), and whether it is consistent with what we know about intervention strategies (it is). I conclude that implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings. (shrink)

Philosophers are divided over whether implicit biases are beliefs. Critics of the belief model of implicit bias argue that empirical data show that implicit biases are habitual but unstable and not sensitive to evidence. They are not rational or consistently action-guiding like beliefs are supposed to be. In contrast, proponents of the belief model of implicit bias argue that they are stable enough, sensitive to some evidence, and do guide our actions, albeit haphazardly sometimes. With the help of revisionary notions (...) of belief, such as fragmented, Spinozan, and dispositional belief, these theorists argue that implicit biases are beliefs. I argue that both the critiques and defenses of belief models of implicit bias are problematic. This methodological critique suggests that debates about nature of the implicit bias ought to shift away from the belief question and toward more fundamental questions about stability and evidential sensitivity of implicit biases. I chart the path forward for this prescribed shift in the debate. (shrink)

The standard approach to the core phenomenology of thought insertion characterizes it in terms of a normal sense of thought ownership coupled with an abnormal sense of thought agency. Recently, Fernández (2010) has argued that there are crucial problems with this approach and has proposed instead that what goes wrong fundamentally in such a phenomenology is a sense of thought commitment, characterized in terms of thought endorsement. In this paper, we argue that even though Fernández raises new issues that enrich (...) the topic, his proposal cannot rival the version of the standard approach we shall defend. (shrink)

Experiences of thought-insertion are a first-rank, diagnostically central symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients who undergo such delusional mental states report being first-personally aware of an occurrent conscious thought which is not theirs, but which belongs to an external cognitive agent. Patients seem to be right about what they are thinking but mistaken about who is doing the thinking. It is notoriously difficult to make sense of such delusions. One general approach to explaining the etiology of monothematic delusions has come to (...) be known as the endorsement model. This model claims that the patient holds her delusional belief because she simply trusts her bizarre experience and takes it at face value. The content of the bizarre experience thus plays a central role in the etiology of delusions. Despite being widely discussed with respect to delusions like Capgras and Cotard, an endorsement model of thought-insertion has not yet been formulated. This article seeks to fill this void by fleshing out and defending the endorsement approach to delusions of inserted thoughts. It aims to show that such an approach can be defended against objections that have been raised in the literature. In particular, it will be argued that there is nothing wrong with the idea of being first-personally aware of a thought which is presented in consciousness as being someone else's. The upshot is that with respect to delusions of thought-insertion, the endorsement model turns out to be a viable account of why patients come to believe that someone else is inserting thoughts into their minds. (shrink)

I argue that any account of imagination should satisfy the following three desiderata. First, imaginations induce actions only in conjunction with beliefs about the environment of the imagining subject. Second, there is a continuum between imaginations and beliefs. Recognizing this continuum is crucial to explain the phenomenon of imaginative immersion. Third, the mental states that relate to imaginations in the way that desires relate to beliefs are a special kind of desire, namely desires to make true in fiction. These desires (...) to make true in fiction do not differ from regular desires in kind, but only in content. I argue for these three desiderata in turn by critically discussing several recent accounts of imagination. (shrink)

Kengo Miyazono’s Delusions and Beliefs: A Philosophical Inquiry is an attempt to provide a unified account of the nature, pathology, and etiology of delusions. The strength of his book resides in the clarity of arguments and its consistent adoption of a biological explanation of delusions, based on teleo-functionalism about mental states. However, there are some weaknesses in each of his arguments regarding the nature, pathology, and etiology of delusions. Regarding the nature of delusions, teleo-functionalism makes it difficult to confirm that (...) delusions are beliefs. Regarding the pathology of delusions, I suggest that the existence of harmful malfunction is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a belief to be considered pathological, and that additional evidence is needed to justify the separation of the belief and the holder’s personhood. Regarding the etiology, it is not reasonable to incorporate the prediction error theory into a kind of two-factor theory. Therefore, the details of his arguments require further modification. (shrink)

Just as sadness is not always a symptom of mood disorder, irrational beliefs are not always symptoms of illness. Pathological irrational beliefs are distinguished from non-pathological ones by considering whether their existence is best explained by assuming some underlying dysfunctions. The features from which to infer the pathological nature of irrational beliefs are: un-understandability of their progression; uniqueness; coexistence with other psycho-physiological disturbances and/or concurrent decreased levels of functioning; bizarreness of content; preceding organic diseases known to be associated with irrational (...) beliefs; treatment response to medical intervention, etc. Severe irrationality is sometimes caused by normal human motivation rather than by mental or physical dysfunction. Pure forms of self-deception may satisfy the diagnostic criteria of delusional disorder, but there may be no evidence that suggests that they are caused by illness. Although those with pathological delusions do not recognize their delusions as symptomatic of illness, differentiating pathological beliefs from normal irrational beliefs is vitally important: If a belief is pathological, psychiatrists must seriously consider treating the patient against her will. If it is not pathological, conversely, involuntary treatments are prohibited because they offend her basic autonomy. (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)

What is it for a speech-act to be sincere? A very tempting answer, defended by John Searle and others, is that a speech-act is sincere just in case the speaker has the state of mind it expresses. I argue that we should instead hold that a speech-act is sincere just in case the speaker believes that she has the state of mind she believes it expresses (Sections 1 and 2). Scenarios in which speakers are deluded about their own states of (...) mind play an important role in arguing for this account. In the course of developing this account I also explore how it might make good use of the often neglected distinction between insincerity and mere non-sincerity (Section 2). After defending and developing my positive proposal, I explore its implications for debates over expressivism in meta-ethics (Sections 3 and 4). (shrink)

This paper explores the two-factor theoretical model currently widely used to provide an explanatory analysis of the delusions that regularly accompany neurological disease or damage. The model hypothesizes a combination of an experiential factor – a strange or untoward experience – and a cognitive factor, such as an impairment of reasoning. The two-factor model has been devised formonothematicdelusions that are usually manifested in a single, implausible idea. These have to be distinguished from the more elaborated,polythematicdelusions that are found in psychiatry. (...) Psychiatric delusions exceed neurological ones in frequency and, often, semantic complexity. This text offers a preliminary clarification of underlying assumptions about the breadth, terminology and presuppositions of two-factor theorizing, exploring its potential application to psychiatric delusions. (shrink)

: Extreme pain and suffering are associated with depression as well as tissue damage. The impossibility of imagining any feelings of pain and suffering intersect with two matters: the kind of imagining involved, and the nature of delusions. These two correspond to the sequence of the following discussion, in which it is contended first that feelings of pain and suffering resist being imagined in a certain, key way, and second that, given a certain analysis of delusional thought, this precludes the (...) possibility of delusional affections while allowing delusions about affections. Keywords: Pain; Imagination; Delusion; Affection; Feelings Dolore immaginato e dolore illusorio Riassunto: Dolore estremo e sofferenza sono solitamente associati a depressione e danni tissutali. L’impossibilità di immaginare il provare dolore e sofferenza dipende da due fattori: il tipo di immaginazione coinvolta e la natura dell’illusione. Questi due fattori saranno trattati in parallelo nell’analisi che qui si propone, in cui si discuterà in primo luogo come il provare dolore e sofferenza oppongano resistenza all’essere immaginati in un certo modo e in secondo luogo come, secondo una certa analisi del pensiero illusorio, questo preclude la possibilità di affezioni illusorie mentre consente illusioni circa le affezioni. Parole chiave: Dolore; Immaginazione; Illusioni; Affezione; Sensazioni. (shrink)

Clinical delusions have traditionally been characterized as beliefs in psychiatry. However, philosophers have recently engaged with the empirical literature and produced a number of objections to the so-called doxastic status of delusion, stemming mainly from the mismatch between the functional role of delusions and that expected of beliefs. In response to this, an appeal to dispositionalism about the nature of belief has been proposed to vindicate the doxastic status of delusion. In this paper, I first present the objections to attributing (...) beliefs to delusional patients and the application of dispositionalism in the attempt to vindicate doxasticism. I then assess this application and some responses to the objections to the doxastic characterization. Finally, I offer some conclusions about the limits of folk-psychological concepts in the characterization and explanation of complex psychological phenomena such as delusions. (shrink)

There are a number of conflicting accounts of thought insertion, the delusion that the thoughts of another are inserted into one’s own mind. These accounts share the common assumption of realism: that the subject of thought insertion has a thought corresponding to the description of her thought insertion episode. I challenge the assumption by arguing for an anti-realist treatment of first-person reports of thought insertion. I then offer an alternative account, simulationism, according to which sufferers merely simulate having a thought (...) inserted into their heads. By rejecting realism, the paper undermines a widespread explanatory framework that unites otherwise competing cognitive models of thought insertion. (shrink)

This essay presents a new account of thought insertion. Prevailing views in both philosophy and cognitive science tend to characterize the experience of thought insertion as missing or lacking some element, such as a ‘sense of agency’, found in ordinary first-person awareness of one's own thoughts. By contrast, I propose that, rather than lacking something, experiences of thought insertion have an additional feature not present in ordinary conscious experiences of one's own thoughts. More specifically, I claim that the structure of (...) an experience of thought insertion consists of two distinct elements: a state of ordinary first-person awareness and a sense that this state of awareness is highly unusual. In addition to modeling the experience of thought insertion, I also explain how a delusional pattern of thinking could lead someone who has this kind of experience to adopt a belief that some other entity is inserting thoughts into her mind. Finally, I briefly sketch a neurocomputational framework that could be developed to explain the sense that one's state of first-person awareness is highly irregular. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 846-873, December 2021.

Monothematic delusions involve a single theme, and often occur in the absence of a more general delusional belief system. They are cognitively atypical insofar as they are said to be held in the absence of evidence, are resistant to correction, and have bizarre contents. Empiricism about delusions has it that anomalous experience is causally implicated in their formation, whilst rationalism has it that delusions result from top down malfunctions from which anomalous experiences can follow. Within empiricism, two approaches to the (...) nature of the abnormality/abnormalities involved have been touted by philosophers and psychologists. One-factor approaches have it that monothematic delusions are a normal response to anomalous experiences whilst two-factor approaches seek to identify a clinically abnormal pattern of reasoning in addition to anomalous experience to explain the resultant delusion. In this paper we defend a one-factor approach. We begin by making clear what we mean by atypical, abnormal, and factor. We then identify the phenomenon of interest and overview one and two-factor empiricism about its formation. We critically evaluate the cases for various second factors, and find them all wanting. In light of this we turn to our one-factor account, identifying two ways in which ‘normal response’ may be understood, and how this bears on the discussion of one-factor theories up until this point. We then conjecture that what is at stake is a certain view about the epistemic responsibility of subjects with delusions, and the role of experience, in the context of familiar psychodynamic features. After responding to two objections, we conclude that the onus is on two-factor theorists to show that the one-factor account is inadequate. Until then, the one-factor account ought to be understood as the default position for explaining monothematic delusion formation and retention. We don’t rule out the possibility that, for particular subjects with delusions there may be a second factor at work causally implicated in their delusory beliefs but, until the case for the inadequacy of the single factor is made, the second factor is redundant and fails to pick out the minimum necessary for a monothematic delusion to be present. (shrink)

Lisa Bortolotti argues convincingly that opponents of the doxastic view of delusion are committed to unnecessarily stringent standards for belief attribution. Folk psychology recognises many non-rational ways in which beliefs can be caused, and our attributions of delusions may be guided by a sense that delusions are beliefs that we cannot explain in any folk psychological terms.

The central hypothesis of this book, Delusions and Beliefs: A Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge, 2019), is that delusions are malfunctional beliefs (Chapter 1); they belong to the category of belief (Chapter 2) but, unlike mundane false or irrational beliefs, they fail to perform some functions of belief (Chapter 3). More precisely, delusions directly or indirectly involve some malfunctioning cognitive mechanisms, which is empirically supported by the two-factor account of delusion formation (Chapter 4).

Our lives are commonly involved with fictionality, an activity that adults share with children. After providing a brief reconstruction of the most important cognitive theories on pretence, we will argue that pretence has to do with metarepresentations, albeit in a rather weakened sense. In our view, pretending entails being aware that a certain representation does not fit in the very same representational model as another representation. This is a minimal metarepresentationalism, for normally metarepresentationalism on pretense claims that pretending is or (...) entails representing a representation qua representation, i.e. as conceptualised as a representation, in its very content. In the final section we will try to draw some consequences of our view as to the debate in cognitive science on mindreading. Given this minimal metarepresentationalism, the two main positions on mindreading, the ‘theory theory’ and the ‘simulation theory’, turn out to be closer than one would have originally supposed. (shrink)

The target of this paper is the ‘simple’ knowledge account of assertion, according to which assertion is constituted by a single epistemic rule of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p’. My aim is to argue that those who are attracted to a knowledge account of assertion should prefer what I call the ‘complex’ knowledge account, according to which assertion is constituted by a system of rules all of which are, taken together, constitutive of assertion. One (...) of those rules—which, following John Searle, I call the ‘preparatory condition’—is of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p.’ All else being equal, simple accounts are preferable to complex accounts. I argue in this paper that all else isn't equal. While the simple knowledge account provides an elegant explanation of certain data, it is hard to see how to integrate the simple knowledge account into a more general theory of illocutionary acts. Because the complex knowledge account avoids this objection whil.. (shrink)

El problema tipológico surge al intentar definir el tipo de estado mental que subyace a los reportes de pacientes delirantes. Este artículo explora dos de los enfoques más populares a este problema en la literatura actual en filosofía de la mente. El análisis concluye que el enfoque doxástico —que conceptualiza los delirios como creencias anormales— es superior en términos conceptuales, empíricos y fenomenológicos al enfoque imaginístico, que caracteriza a los delirios como un tipo de estado mental imaginario. Finalmente, se concluye (...) con algunos de los desafíos que el enfoque necesita resolver para ampliar su alcance y poder explicativo. (shrink)

Because of the privileged place of beliefs in explaining behaviour, mismatch cases—in which agents sincerely claim to believe that p, but act in a way that is inconsistent with that belief—have attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, I argue that some of these cases, at least, are at least partially explained by agents believing that they believe that p, while failing to believe that p. Agents in these cases do not believe that ~p; rather, they have an (...) indistinct first‐order, beliefy, representation that p. The indistinctness of this first‐order representation provides the leeway for the inconsistency seen in their behaviour. (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)

It is often held that in imagining experiences we exploit a special imagistic way of representing mentality—one that enables us to think about mental states in terms of what it is like to have them. According to some, when this way of thinking about the mind is paired with more objective means, an explanatory gap between the phenomenal and physical features of mental states arises. This paper advances a view along those lines, but with a twist. What many take for (...) a special imagistic way of thinking about experiences is instead a special way of misconstruing them. It is this tendency to misrepresent experiences through the use of imagery that gives rise to the appearance of an explanatory gap. The pervasiveness and tenacity of this misrepresentational reflex can be traced to its roots in a particular heuristic for monitoring and remembering the mental states of others. The arguments together amount to a new path for defending the transparency of perceptual experience. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue (1) that the contents of some delusions are believed with sufficient confidence; (2) that a delusional subject could have a conscious belief in the content of his delusion (p), and concurrently judge a contradictory content (not-p) – his delusion could be transparent (Krstić 2020), and (3) that the existence of even one such case reveals a problem with pretty much all existing accounts of lying, since it suggests that one can lie by asserting what one (...) consciously and confidently believes is true, and (4) sincerity, since it suggests that asserting a proposition you believe is true is neither sufficient nor necessary for sincerity. If I am right about (1) and (2), then (3) and (4) follow easily. Therefore, the paper is mainly devoted to an analysis of transparent delusion and defending (1) and (2). (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a kind of delusion in which the patients judge that their occurrent thoughts are false and try to abandon them precisely because they are false, but fail to do so. I call this delusion transparent, since it is transparent to the sufferer that their thought is false. In explaining this phenomenon, I defend a particular two-factor theory of delusion that takes the proper integration of relevant reasoning processes as vital for thought-evaluation. On this proposal, which (...) is a refinement of Gerrans’s account of delusion as unsupervised by decontextualized processing, I can have all my reasoning processes working reliably and thus judge that my delusion is false but, if I cannot use their outputs when revising the thought itself, the delusion will persist. I also sketch how this framework explains some interesting cases of failed belief-revision in the general population in which people judge that ~p but nonetheless continue to believe that p. (shrink)

Why do we tend to think that phenomenal consciousness poses a hard problem? The answer seems to lie in part in the fact that we have the impression that phenomenal experiences are presented to us in a particularly immediate and revelatory way: we have a sense of acquaintance with our experiences. Recent views have offered resources to explain such persisting impression, by hypothesizing that the very design of our cognitive systems inevitably leads us to hold beliefs about our own experiences (...) with certainty. I argue against this kind of “designed certainty” views. First, I claim that it is doubtful that we really hold beliefs about our own experiences with certainty—in any sense of certainty that would make our phenomenal beliefs special. Second, I claim that, even if it were the case that we hold beliefs about experiences with certainty, this would fall short of explaining our sense of acquaintance. (shrink)

No particular dagger was the object of Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger. In contrast, when he hallucinated his former comrade Banquo, Banquo himself was the object of the hallucination. Although philosophers have had much to say about the nature and philosophical import of hallucinations (e.g. Macpherson and Platchias, Hallucination, 2013) and object-involving attitudes (e.g. Jeshion, New essays on singular thought, 2010), their intersection has largely been neglected. Yet, object-involving hallucinations raise interesting questions about memory, perception, and the ways in which (...) we have knowledge of the world around us. In this paper, I offer an account of object-involving hallucinations. Specifically, I argue that they are an unusual species of perceptual remembering. (shrink)

Imagination and belief are obviously different. Imagining that you have won the lottery is not quite the same as believing that you have won. But what is the difference? According to a standard view in the contemporary debate, they differ in two key functional respects. First, with respect to the cognitive inputs to which they respond: imaginings do not respond to real-world evidence as beliefs do. Second, with respect to the behavioural outputs that they produce: imaginings do not motivate us (...) to act as beliefs do. I argue that this view is mistaken in one important respect. The distinction between imagination and belief does lie at the functional level; but the relevant functional difference does not concern behavioural outputs – since, in spite of appearances, imaginings and beliefs motivate us to act in the same ways. To see the difference, we need to focus on the inputs side – and, relatedly, on the sorts of inferential relations that imaginings and beliefs bear to each other. I show that this view does not have the absurd consequences that it may prima facie seem to have; on the contrary, it has important implications for our understanding of how the mind works. (shrink)

Delusions have traditionally been considered the hallmark of mental illness, and their conception, diagnosis and treatment raise many of the fundamental conceptual and practical questions of psychopathology. One of these fundamental questions is whether delusions are understandable. In this paper, we propose to consider the question of understandability of delusions from a philosophy of language perspective. For this purpose, we frame the question of how delusions can be understood as a question about the meaning of delusional utterances. Accordingly, we ask: (...) “what meaning(s) can delusional utterances possibly have?”. We argue that in the current literature, there is a standard approach to the meaning of delusional utterances, namely the descriptive account which assumes that a delusional utterance “p” means that p is the case. Drawing on Speech Act Theory, we argue that solely relying on the descriptive account disregards essential ways of how linguistic meaning is constituted. Further, we show that Speech Act Theory can prove a helpful addition to the theoretical and clinical “toolbox” used for attempting to understand delusional utterances. This, we believe, may address some of the theoretical and clinical shortcomings of using only the currently predominant descriptive account. (shrink)

A theory which has had significant influence seeks to explain auditory verbal hallucinations as utterances in inner speech which are not properly monitored and are consequently misattributed to some external source. This paper argues for a distinction between inner speech and imagined speech, on the basis that inner speech is a type of actual speech. The paper argues that AVHs are more likely instances of imagined speech, rather that inner speech, which are not properly monitored : 86–107, 2012), Cho and (...) Wu and Cho and Wu, although they prefer a quite different explanation of AVHs). (shrink)

We propose another positive illusion that fits with McKay & Dennett's (M&D's) criteria for adaptive misbeliefs. This illusion is pervasive in adult reasoning but we focus on its prevalence in children's developing theories. It is a strongly held conviction arising from normal functioning of the doxastic system that confers adaptive advantage on the individual.

Jennifer Radden has drawn attention to two features of delusion, ambivalence and subjectivity, which are problematic for theories of delusion that treat delusions as empirical beliefs. She argues for an ‘attitude’ theory of delusion. I argue that once the cognitive architecture of delusion formation is properly described the debate between doxastic and attitude theorists loses its edge. That architecture suggests that delusions are produced by activity in the ‘default mode network’ unsupervised by networks required for decontextualized processing. The cognitive properties (...) of these networks explain the features of delusion which generate the debate between doxastic and attitude theorists. (shrink)