Delusions and Not-Quite-Beliefs

Neuroethics 5 (1):29-37 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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

Similar books and articles

Shaking the bedrock.Lisa Bortolotti - 2011 - Philosophy Psychiatry Psychology 18 (1):77-87.
Are the Deluded Believers? Are Philosophers Among the Deluded?George Graham - 2010 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 17 (4):337-339.
Delusions and Dispositionalism about Belief.Maura Tumulty - 2011 - Mind and Language 26 (5):596-628.
Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs.Lisa Bortolotti - 2009 - Oxford University Press. Edited by K. W. M. Fulford, John Sadler, Stanghellini Z., Morris Giovanni, Bortolotti Katherine, Broome Lisa & Matthew.
Delusional beliefs and reason giving.Lisa Bortolotti & Matthew R. Broome - 2008 - Philosophical Psychology 21 (6):801-21.
The Folk Epistemology of Delusions.Dominic Murphy - 2011 - Neuroethics 5 (1):19-22.
Delusions and the background of rationality.Lisa Bortolotti - 2005 - Mind and Language 20 (2):189-208.
Delusions as Doxastic States: Contexts, Compartments, and Commitments.Tim Bayne - 2010 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 17 (4):329-336.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-06-20

Downloads
282 (#65,595)

6 months
70 (#55,308)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Maura Tumulty
Colgate University

References found in this work

Responsibility for believing.Pamela Hieronymi - 2008 - Synthese 161 (3):357-373.
Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs.Lisa Bortolotti - 2009 - Oxford University Press. Edited by K. W. M. Fulford, John Sadler, Stanghellini Z., Morris Giovanni, Bortolotti Katherine, Broome Lisa & Matthew.
On the aim of belief.David Velleman - 2000 - In The Possibility of Practical Reason. Oxford University Press. pp. 244--81.

View all 14 references / Add more references