Explaining the placebo effect: Aliefs, beliefs, and conditioning

Philosophical Psychology 24 (5):679-698 (2011)
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Abstract

There are a number of competing psychological accounts of the placebo effect, and much of the recent debate centers on the relative importance of classical conditioning and conscious beliefs. In this paper, I discuss apparent problems with these accounts and with?disjunctive? accounts that deny that placebo effects can be given a unified psychological explanation. The fact that some placebo effects seem to be mediated by cognitive states with content that is consciously inaccessible and inferentially isolated from a subject's beliefs motivates an account of the placebo effect in terms of subdoxastic cognitive states. I propose that aliefs, subdoxastic cognitive states that are associative, automatic, and arational, can provide a unified psychological account of the placebo effect. This account also has the potential to illuminate interesting connections to other psychological phenomena

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Matthew Haug
William & Mary

Citations of this work

An enactive account of placebo effects.Giulio Ongaro & Dave Ward - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (4):507-533.

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References found in this work

Alief and Belief.Tamar Gendler - 2008 - Journal of Philosophy 105 (10):634-663.
Beliefs and subdoxastic states.Stephen P. Stich - 1978 - Philosophy of Science 45 (December):499-518.
Scientific Explanation.Philip Kitcher & Wesley C. Salmon (eds.) - 1962 - Univ of Minnesota Pr.
Alief in Action (and Reaction).Tamar Szabó Gendler - 2008 - Mind and Language 23 (5):552--585.
Too self-fulfilling.Peter Cave - 2001 - Analysis 61 (2):141-146.

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