Delusions are a common symptom of schizophrenia and dementia. Though most English dictionaries define a delusion as a false opinion or belief, there is currently a lively debate about whether delusions are really beliefs and indeed, whether they are even irrational. The book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions. It brings together the psychological literature on the aetiology and the behavioural manifestations of delusions, and the philosophical literature on belief ascription and rationality. The (...) thesis of the book is that delusions are continuous with ordinary beliefs, a thesis that could have important theoretical and practical implications for psychiatric classification and the clinical treatment of subjects with delusions. By bringing together recent work in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology and psychiatry, the book offers a comprehensive review of the philosophical issues raised by the psychology of normal and abnormal cognition, defends the doxastic conception of delusions, and develops a theory about the role of judgements of rationality and of attributions of self-knowledge in belief ascription. Presenting a highly original analysis of the debate on the nature of delusions, this book will interest philosophers of mind, epistemologists, philosophers of science, cognitive scientists, psychiatrists, and mental health professionals. (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)

Delusions play a fundamental role in the history of psychology, philosophy and culture, dividing not only the mad from the sane but reason from unreason. Yet the very nature and extent of delusions are poorly understood. What are delusions? How do they differ from everyday errors or mistaken beliefs? Are they scientific categories? In this superb, panoramic investigation of delusion Jennifer Radden explores these questions and more, unravelling a fascinating story that ranges from Descartes’s demon to famous (...) first-hand accounts of delusion, such as Daniel Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Radden places delusion in both a clinical and cultural context and explores a fascinating range of themes: delusions as both individually and collectively held, including the phenomenon of folies á deux ; spiritual and religious delusions, in particular what distinguishes normal religious belief from delusions with religious themes; how we assess those suffering from delusion from a moral standpoint; and how we are to interpret violent actions when they are the result of delusional thinking. As well as more common delusions, such as those of grandeur, she also discusses some of the most interesting and perplexing forms of clinical delusion, such as Cotard and Capgras. (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)

Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on Delusions.

Subjects with delusions profess to believe some extremely peculiar things. Patients with Capgras delusion sincerely assert that, for example, their spouses have been replaced by impostors. Patients with Cotard’s delusion sincerely assert that they are dead. Many philosophers and psychologists are hesitant to say that delusional subjects genuinely believe the contents of their delusions.2 One way to reinterpret delusional subjects is to say that we’ve misidentified the content of the problematic belief. So for example, rather than believing that (...) his wife is has been replaced by an impostor, we might say that the victim of Capgras delusion believes that it is, in some respects, as if his wife has been replaced by an impostor. Another is to say that we’ve misidentified the attitude that the delusional subject bears to the content of their delusion. So for example, Gregory Currie and co-authors have suggested that rather than believing that his wife has been replaced by an impostor, we should say that the victim of Capgras delusion merely imagines that his wife has been replaced by an impostor.3. (shrink)

Psychopathological delusions have a number of features that are curiously difficult to explain. Delusions are resistant to counterevidence and impervious to counterargument. Delusions are theoretically, affectively, and behaviorally circumscribed: delusional individuals often do not act on their delusions and often do not update beliefs on the basis of their delusions. Delusional individuals are occasionally able to distinguish their delusions from other beliefs, sometimes speaking of their “delusional reality.” To explain these features, I offer a (...) model according to which, contrary to appearances, delusions are not beliefs at all. Delusions are acceptances that are generated by pathologically powerful cognitive feelings. This model has implications for the way that we should think about non-pathological doxastic states and emotions. (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.

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)

In this paper we ask whether the two-factor theory of delusions is compatible with two claims, that delusions are pathological and that delusions are adaptive. We concentrate on two recent and influential models of the two-factor theory: the one proposed by Max Coltheart, Peter Menzies and John Sutton (2010) and the one developed by Ryan McKay (2012). The models converge on the nature of Factor 1 but diverge about the nature of Factor 2. The differences between the (...) two models are reflected in different accounts of the pathological and adaptive nature of delusions. We will explore such differences, considering naturalist and normativist accounts of the pathological and focusing on judgements of adaptiveness that are informed by the shear-pin hypothesis (McKay and Dennett 2009). After reaching our conclusions about the two models, we draw more general implications for the status of delusions within two-factor theories. Are there good grounds to claim that delusions are pathological? Are delusions ever adaptive? Can delusions be at the same time pathological and adaptive? (shrink)

We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then, we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher’s view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief. The second (...) factor in the aetiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows. But we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

Although delusions are typically regarded as beliefs of a certain kind, there have been worries about the doxastic conception of delusions since at least Bleuler’s time. ‘Anti-doxasticists,’ as we might call them, do not merely worry about the claim that delusions are beliefs, they reject it. Reimer’s paper weighs into the debate between ‘doxasticists’ and ‘anti-doxasticists’ by suggesting that one of the main arguments given against the doxastic conception of delusions—what we might call the functional role (...) objection—is based on a fallacy. She also draws attention to certain parallels between delusions and what she calls “nihilistic philosophical doctrines,” such as the skeptical position that we have no .. (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)

Chris Frith has argued that a loss of the sense of agency is central to schizophrenia. This suggests a connection between hallucinations and delusions on the one hand, and the misidentification of the subject’s imaginings as perceptions and beliefs on the other. In particular, understanding the mechanisms that underlie imagination may help us to explain the puzzling phenomena of thought insertion and withdrawal. Frith sometimes states his argument in terms of a loss of metarepresentational capacity in schizophrenia. I argue (...) that this formulation is unhelpful. (shrink)

According to the Rationality Constraint, our concept of belief imposes limits on how much irrationality is compatible with having beliefs at all. We argue that empirical evidence of human irrationality from the psychology of reasoning and the psychopathology of delusion undermines only the most demanding versions of the Rationality Constraint, which require perfect rationality as a condition for having beliefs. The empirical evidence poses no threat to more relaxed versions of the Rationality Constraint, which only require only minimal rationality. Nevertheless, (...) we raise problems for all versions of the Rationality Constraint by appealing to more extreme forms of irrationality that are continuous with actual cases of human irrationality. In particular, we argue that there are conceivable cases of “mad belief” in which populations of Lewisian madmen have beliefs that are not even minimally rational. This undermines Lewis’s claim that our ordinary concept of belief is a theoretical concept that is implicitly defined by its role in folk psychology. We argue that introspection gives us a phenomenal concept of belief that cannot be analyzed by applying Lewis’s semantics for theoretical terms. (shrink)

_Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy_ provides new foundations and methods for the revolutionary project of philosophical therapy pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book vindicates this currently much-discussed project by reconstructing the genesis of important philosophical problems: With the help of concepts adapted from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, the book analyses how philosophical reflection is shaped by pictures and metaphors we are not aware of employing and are prone to misapply. Through innovative case-studies on the genesis of classical problems about (...) the mind and perception, and on thinkers including Locke, Berkeley and Ayer, the book demonstrates how such autonomous habits of thought systematically generate unsound intuitions and philosophical delusions, whose clash with reality, or among each other, gives rise to ill-motivated but maddening problems. The book re-examines models of therapeutic philosophy, due to Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and develops an approach that may let us overcome philosophical delusions and the problems they engender. In this way, the book explains where and why therapy in called for in philosophy, and develops techniques to carry it out. (shrink)

Discussion on the Cotard delusion often focuses on the patient’s delusional belief that he/she is dead. Of interest to this paper, however, is the little referred to claim made by some Cotard patients that they are immortal. How might one explain the juxta-position of death and immortality evident in patients sharing the same clinical diagnosis, and how might these delusional beliefs inform our understanding of patient phenomenology, particularly regarding experiences of existential change? This paper sets out to explain delusions (...) of death and immortality in Cotard patients with reference to changes in their experience of being, owed in part to a conflict in recognition evident in other delusional disorders such as the Capgras and Frégoli delusions. This experiential change is positioned within an interactionist framework of bottom-up and top-down processing that is also compatible with explanationist and endorsement approaches to delusions. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the scientific respectability of delusion as a psychiatric category. First, I present the essentialist objection to the natural kindhood of psychiatric categories, as well as non-essentialism about natural kinds as a response to that objection. Second, I present a nuanced classification of kinds of kinds. Third, drawing on the claim that the attribution of delusion relies on a folk psychological underpinning, I present the mind-dependence objection to the natural kind status of delusion. Finally, I argue (...) that even if delusion as a generic kind stands little chance of being vindicated as a non-essentialist natural kind, we stand to gain from a natural kind methodology regarding subtypes of delusion for which there is evidence of genuine causal signatures and mechanisms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmpiricists about monothematic delusion formation agree that anomalous experience is a factor in the formation of these attitudes, but disagree markedly on which further factors need to be specified. I argue that epistemic innocence may be a unifying feature of monothematic delusions, insofar as a judgment of epistemic innocence to this class of attitudes is one that opposing empiricist accounts can make. The notion of epistemic innocence allows us to tell a richer story when investigating the epistemic status of (...) monothematic delusions, one which resists the trade-off view of pragmatic benefits and epistemic costs. Though monothematic delusions are often characterized by appeal to their epistemic costs, they can play a positive epistemic role, and this is a surprising conclusion on which, so I argue, all empiricists can agree. Thus, I show that all empiricists have the notion of epistemic innocence at their disposal. (shrink)

Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as drained of (...) their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

In chapter 3 of Delusions and Beliefs, Kengo Miyazono argues that, when delusions are pathological beliefs, they are so due to their being both harmful and malfunctional. In this brief commentary, I put pressure on Miyazono’s account of delusions as harmful malfunctioning beliefs. No delusions might satisfy the malfunction criterion and some delusions might fail to satisfy the harmfulness criterion when such conditions are interpreted as criteria for pathological beliefs. In the end, I raise a (...) general concern about attributing pathological status to single beliefs out of context, and gesture towards the idea of pathology as a failure of agency to which some beliefs can contribute but that can only be identified by considering the person as a whole. (shrink)

Discussion on the Cotard delusion often focuses on the patient’s delusional belief that he/she is dead. Of interest to this paper, however, is the little referred to claim made by some Cotard patients that they are immortal. How might one explain the juxta-position of death and immortality evident in patients sharing the same clinical diagnosis, and how might these delusional beliefs inform our understanding of patient phenomenology, particularly regarding experiences of existential change? This paper sets out to explain delusions (...) of death and immortality in Cotard patients with reference to changes in their experience of being, owed in part to a conflict in recognition evident in other delusional disorders such as the Capgras and Frégoli delusions. This experiential change is positioned within an interactionist framework of bottom-up and top-down processing that is also compatible with explanationist and endorsement approaches to delusions. (shrink)

Although a common clinical phenomenon, delusions are difficult to explain and have a problematic conceptual status. Advances in understanding delusions have come from studies which involve detailed investigation of particular types of delusion. Some of this work is summarised, with the Capgras and Cotard delusions as specific examples. These are used to high-highlight questions for which there is the potential for fruitful dialogue with philosophers. Such questions include the criteria for deciding that a statement represents a belief, (...) the extent to which we integrate our beliefs into a coherent web, and the nature and limits of human rationality. (shrink)

In some ways, someone suffering from the delusion that his or her spouse has been kidnapped and replaced with an imposter appears to believe that he or she eats dinner with an imposter every night. But the imperviousness of delusions to counter-evidence makes it hard to classify them as beliefs, and easier to classify them as imaginings. Bayne and Pacherie want to use Schwitzgebel’s dispositional account of belief to restore confidence in the doxastic character of delusion. While dispositionalism appears (...) to allow us to classify delusions as beliefs, this allowance isn’t a robust vindication of doxasticism. The significance of the allowance can be increased by emphasizing the role of folk-psychological norms in individuating propositional attitudes. But letting those norms play a large role in the individuation of belief makes it hard to count as believers the deluded subjects who violate most such norms. Dispositionalism about belief can’t defend doxasticism about delusion. (shrink)

In Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs , Lisa Bortolotti argues that the irrationality of delusions is no barrier to their being classified as beliefs. This comment asks how Bortolotti’s position may be affected if we accept that there are two distinct types of belief, belonging to different levels of mentality and subject to different ascriptive constraints. It addresses some worries Bortolotti has expressed about the proposed two-level framework and outlines some questions that arise for her if the framework (...) is adopted. It also suggests that, rather than being beliefs that fail to meet the relevant standards of rationality, delusions may be non-doxastic acceptances that were never meant to meet them. (shrink)

The papers in this volume are drawn from a workshop on delusion and self-deception, held at Macquarie University in November of 2004. Our aim was to bring together theorists working on delusions and self-deception with an eye towards identifying and fostering connections—at both empirical and conceptual levels—between these domains. As the contributions to this volume testify, there are multiple points of contact between delusion and self-deception. This introduction charts the conceptual space in which these points of contact can be (...) located and introduces the reader to some of the general issues that frame the discussion of subsequent chapters. (shrink)

After briefly reviewing some of the empirical and philosophical literature suggesting that there may be an adaptive role for delusion formation, we discuss the results of a recent study consisting of in-depth interviews with people experiencing delusions. We analyse three such cases in terms of the circumstances preceding the development of the delusion; the effects of the development of the delusion on the person’s situation; and the potential protective nature of the delusional belief as seen from the first-person perspective. (...) We argue that the development of the delusional belief can play a short-term protective function and we reflect on the implications that this might have for our understanding of psychotic symptoms, for the stigma associated with mental health issues, and for treatment options. (shrink)

What sort of mental state is a delusion? What causes delusions? Why are delusions pathological? This book examines these questions, which are normally considered separately, in a much-needed exploration of an important and fascinating topic, Kengo Miyazono assesses the philosophical, psychological and psychiatric literature on delusions to argue that delusions are malfunctioning beliefs. Delusions belong to the same category as beliefs but - unlike healthy irrational beliefs - fail to play the function of beliefs. (...) class='Hi'>Delusions and Beliefs: A Philosophical Inquiry will be of great interest to students of philosophy of mind and psychology and philosophy of mental disorder, as well as those in related fields such as mental health and psychiatry. (shrink)

This collection of essays focuses on the interface between delusions and self-deception.

I argue that some cases of delusions show the inadequacy of those theories of interpretation that rely on a necessary rationality constraint on belief ascription. In particular I challenge the view that irrational beliefs can be ascribed only against a general background of rationality. Subjects affected by delusions seem to be genuine believers and their behaviour can be successfully explained in intentional terms, but they do not meet those criteria that according to Davidson (1985a) need to be met (...) for the background of rationality to be in place. (shrink)

In Delusions and Beliefs, Kengo Miyazono proposes an extended and convincing argument for the thesis that delusions are malfunctional beliefs. One of the key assumptions for this argument is that belief is a biological notion, and that the function of beliefs is a product of evolution. I challenge the thesis that evolutionary accounts can furnish an epistemologically satisfying account of beliefs because evolutionary success does not necessarily track epistemic success. Consequently, also delusions as beliefs cannot be explained (...) in a satisfactory manner by looking at beliefs’ evolutionary function. How can we then salvage the notion of delusions as epistemologically relevant malfunctioning beliefs? I propose that knowledge-first epistemology gives us a way out. Knowledge-first accounts argue that knowledge is more primitive than belief. That is, knowledge is not a kind of successful beliefs ; instead, beliefs are failed attempts at knowledge. Being a belief derives from the norms of knowledge. Explaining the epistemology of beliefs through the primitive norms of knowledge, we can also explain why delusions are malfunctional beliefs: The cognitive and psychological defects that produce delusions block the beliefs from becoming knowledge. Consequently, delusions are attempts at knowledge that have failed particularly badly. (shrink)

According to current representationalist concepts, delusion is considered the result of faulty information processing or incorrect inference about external reality. In contrast, the paper develops a concept of delusion as a disturbance of the enactive and intersubjective constitution of a shared reality. A foundation of this concept is provided by a theory of the objectivity of perception which is achieved on two levels: (1) On the first level, the sensorimotor interaction with the environment implies a mobility and multiplicity of perspectives (...) that relativizes the momentary point of view. (2) On the second level, the social interaction with others implies a virtual shifting and contrast of perspectives which helps to overcome a merely subject-centered worldview through participatory sense-making.On this basis, the alteration of experience in beginning psychosis is phenomenologically described as a subjectivization of perception, resulting in an overall experience of self-centrality and derealization. Delusion then converts the disturbance of perception into a reframing of the perceived world, namely an assumed persecution by mundane enemies. Through this, a new sense-making is established, yet in a way that is fundamentally decoupled from the shared world. The possibility of intersubjective understanding is thus sacrificed for the new coherence of the delusion. Further implications of the loss of the intersubjective co-constitution of reality are analyzed, in particular related to disturbances of communication. (shrink)

This paper explores the phenomenology of the Capgras and Cotard delusions. The former is generally characterised as the belief that relatives or friends have been replaced by impostors, and the latter as the conviction that one is dead or has ceased to exist. A commonly reported feature of these delusions is an experienced ''defamiliarisation'' or even ''derealisation'' of things, which is associated with an absence or distortion of affect. I suggest that the importance attributed to affect by current (...) explanations of delusional experience can serve to make explicit the manner in which we ordinarily experience the world under a taken-for-granted aspect of affective familiarity. This implicit feeling is, I argue, partly constitutive of our sense of reality. However, so-called ''folk psychology,'' which is generally adopted by philosophers as an initial interpretive backdrop for delusional beliefs and for beliefs more generally, fails to accommodate it. As a consequence, some pervasive philosophical assumptions concerning the manner in which we experience and understand the world, ourselves, and each other are called into question. (shrink)

I argue that some cases of delusions show the inadequacy of those theories of interpretation that rely on a necessary rationality constraint on belief ascription. In particular I challenge the view that irrational beliefs can be ascribed only against a general background of rationality. Subjects affected by delusions seem to be genuine believers and their behaviour can be successfully explained in intentional terms, but they do not meet those criteria that according to Davidson need to be met for (...) the background of rationality to be in place. (shrink)

Delusions are explanations of anomalous experiences. A theory of delusion requires an explanation of both the anomalous experience _and _the apparently irrational explanation generated by the delusional subject. Hence, we require a model of rational belief formation against which the belief formation of delusional subjects can be evaluated. _Method. _I first describe such a model, distinguishing procedural from pragmatic rationality. Procedural rationality is the use of rules or procedures, deductive or inductive, that produce an inferentially coherent set of propositions. (...) Pragmatic rationality is the use of procedural rationality _in context_. I then apply the distinction to the explanation of the Capgras and the Cotard delusions. I then argue that delusions are failures of pragmatic rationality. I examine the nature of these failures employing the distinction between performance and competence familiar from Chomskian linguistics. _Results. _This approach to the irrationality of delusions reconciles accounts in which the explanation of the anomalous experience exhausts the explanation of delusion, accounts that appeal to further deficits within the reasoning processes of delusional subjects, and accounts that argue that delusions are not beliefs at all. (Respectively, one-stage, two-stage, and expressive accounts.) _Conclusion. _In paradigm cases that concern cognitive neuropsychiatry the irrationality of delusional subjects should be thought of as a performance deficit in pragmatic rationality. (shrink)

What is the relationship between the concepts of the predictive processing theory of brain functioning and the everyday concepts with which people conduct and explain their mental lives? To answer this question, we focus on predictive processing explanations of mental disorder that appeal to false inference. After distinguishing two concepts of false inference, we survey four ways of understanding the relationship between explanations of mental phenomena at the personal and sub-personal level. We then argue that if predictive processing accurately accounts (...) for psychological and socio-cultural dynamics, then personal and sub-personal concepts must display a looping relationship that can impact the nature of at least some mental phenomena. In particular, explaining the phenomenon of delusion in terms of the sub-personal concept of false inference should change the nature of delusional experiences themselves. (shrink)

Over the last 20 years the comparator model for delusions of control has received considerable support in terms of empirical studies. However, the original version clearly needs to be replaced by a model with a much greater degree of sophistication and specificity. Future developments are likely to involve the specification of the role of dopamine in the model and a generalisation of its explanatory power to the whole range of positive symptoms. However, we will still need to explain why (...) symptoms can be so variable and we still do not understand the origin of the most mysterious symptom of all: thought insertion. (shrink)

The dominant conception of delusion in psychiatry is predominantly epistemic. Delusions are almost always characterized in terms of their epistemic defects, i.e., defects with respect to evidence, reasoning, judgment, etc. However, there is an individualistic bias in the epistemic conception; the alleged epistemic defects and abnormalities in delusions relate to individualistic epistemic processes rather than social epistemic processes. We endorse the social epistemological turn in recent philosophical epistemology, and claim that a corresponding turn is needed in the study (...) of delusions. It is a turn from the individualistic conception, which characterizes delusions only by individualistic epistemic defects and abnormalities, to the social epistemic conception, which characterizes delusions by individualistic as well as social epistemic defects and abnormalities. This paper is intended as an initial step toward such a social epistemological turn. In particular, we will develop a new model of the development of delusions according to which testimonial abnormalities, including testimonial isolation and testimonial discount, are a causal factor in the development of delusions. (shrink)

Delusions are often portrayed as paradigmatic instances of incomprehensibility and meaninglessness. Here we investigate the relationship between delusions and meaning from a philosophical perspective, integrating arguments and evidence from cognitive psychology and phenomenological psychopathology. We review some of the empirical and philosophical literature relevant to two claims about delusions and meaning: delusions are meaningful, despite being described as irrational and implausible beliefs; some delusions can also enhance the sense that one’s life is meaningful, supporting agency (...) and creativity in some circumstances. Delusions are not incomprehensible representations of reality. Rather, they can help make sense of one’s unusual experiences and in some circumstances even support one’s endeavours, albeit temporarily and imperfectly. Acknowledging that delusions have meaning and can also give meaning to people’s lives has implications for our understanding of psychotic symptoms and for addressing the stigma associated with psychiatric conditions. (shrink)

[About the book]: Neuroscience has long had an impact on the field of psychiatry, and over the last two decades, with the advent of cognitive neuroscience and functional neuroimaging, that influence has been most pronounced. However, many question whether psychopathology can be understood by relying on neuroscience alone, and highlight some of the perceived limits to the way in which neuroscience informs psychiatry. Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience is a philosophical analysis of the role of neuroscience in the study of psychopathology. (...) The book examines numerous cognitive neuroscientific methods, such as neuroimaging and the use of neuropsychological models, in the context of a variety of psychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, dependence syndrome, and personality disorders. Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience includes chapters on the nature of psychiatry as a science; the compatibility of the accounts of mental illness derived from neuroscience, information-processing, and folk psychology; the nature of mental illness; the impact of methods such as fMRI, neuropsychology, and neurochemistry, on psychiatry; the relationship between phenomenological accounts of mental illness and those provided by naturalistic explanations; the status of delusions and the continuity between delusions and ordinary beliefs; the interplay between clinical and empirical findings in psychopathology and issues in moral psychology and ethics. With contributions from world class experts in philosophy and cognitive science, this book will be essential reading for those who have an interest in the importance and the limitations of cognitive neuroscience as an aid to understanding mental illness. (shrink)

This collection of essays focuses on the interface between delusions and self-deception. As pathologies of belief, delusions and self-deception raise many of the same challenges for those seeking to understand them. Are delusions and self-deception entirely distinct phenomena, or might some forms of self-deception also qualify as delusional? To what extent might models of self-deception and delusion share common factors? In what ways do affect and motivation enter into normal belief-formation, and how might they be implicated in (...) self-deception and delusion? The essays in this volume tackle these questions from both empirical and conceptual perspectives. Some contributors focus on the general question of how to locate self-deception and delusion within our taxonomy of psychological states. Some contributors ask whether particular delusions - such as the Capgras delusion or anosognosia for hemiplegia - might be explained by appeal to motivational and affective factors. And some contributors provide general models of motivated reasoning, against which theories of pathological belief-formation might be measured. (shrink)

Article copyright 2002. We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher's view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional (...) belief. The second factor in the etiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows, but we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze those theories that interpret misidentification delusions in terms of mentalization. The hypothesis under examination holds that a mentalization framework is useful for describing misidentification delusions when identification is thought to be partially based on mentalization. The article provides both a characterization and possible interpretations of such delusions, and possible relations between misidentification and mentalization are scrutinized. Whether the mentalization approach may explain or describe such kinds of mental disorders is (...) considered, with the conclusion that while this approach is unsatisfactory, there is some room for future improvement. (shrink)

Three challenges to a unified understanding of delusions emerge from Radden's On Delusion (2011). Here, I propose that in order to respond to these challenges, and to work towards a unifying framework for delusions, we should see delusions as arising in inference under uncertainty. This proposal is based on the observation that delusions in key respects are surprisingly like perceptual illusions, and it is developed further by focusing particularly on individual differences in uncertainty expectations.

This chapter aims to get away from the ‘psychological attitude’ approach framing current philosophical discussion of delusion. We ask not what kind of attitude a delusion is – a belief or an imagination? Something else? – as if it were already clear what the ‘content’ of a delusion could be. We aim instead to shift attention to the question of the ‘object’ of delusions. What is delusion of? What is the object of this form of thinking? This focus on (...) a delusion’s object, over its attitudinal nature, is partly motivated by a desire properly to connect delusory thought with ordinary forms of fantastical thinking that are ubiquitous in the experiences faced by reflective humans in everyday life. We aim at securing a continuity, in a way that much extant discussion of delusion fails to, between delusory thought with more ordinary forms of thinking present in, for example, fantastical or magical thinking. Exploring familiar expressions of such thinking, especially those involved in love and loss, enables us to bring out the way in which such expressions convey forms of affective self-consciousness – that have the subject and her relations as an object – that are not naturally taken as reports liable to investigation as true or false. This raises the question about what how to think about what someone is doing when they give expression to a delusion should we think of them as expressing an attitude towards a truth or false content, or may they be doing something rather different? (shrink)

Chris Frith has argued that a loss of the sense of agency is central to schizophrenia. This suggests a connection between hallucinations and delusions on the one hand, and the misidentification of the subject’s imaginings as perceptions and beliefs on the other. In particular, understanding the mechanisms that underlie imagination may help us to explain the puzzling phenomena of thought insertion and withdrawal. Frith sometimes states his argument in terms of a loss of metarepresentational capacity in schizophrenia. I argue (...) that this formulation is unhelpful. (shrink)