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Narrative Gaslighting

This week's blogpost comes from Regina Fabry , a philosopher of mind and cognition and works as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Discipline of Philosophy, School of Humanities at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her research currently focusses on self-narration, grief, human-technology interactions, and their intersections. In working on these topics, she brings together philosophical theorising on situated cognition and affectivity with feminist scholarship and research in literary and cultural studies, the empirical cognitive sciences, and AI. Regina Fabry Self-narration is an important part of our mental lives. The configuration and re-configuration of our personal past experiences – and our anticipated futures – in narrative form, many philosophers argue, can be conducive to self-knowledge and self-understanding . Furthermore, self-narratives are an important part of human sociality by facilitating collaborative modes of meaning-making . While self-narratives can take vari...
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Memory, Mourning, and the Chilean Constitution

Today's blogpost is by María Berta López Ríos, Chris McCarroll, and Paloma Muñoz Gómez on their recently published paper Memory, Mourning, and the Chilean Constitution (RHV), published in a special issue of on memory and trauma . “I confess that I am in mourning”. So writes the novelist Ariel Dorfman. This is an interesting statement, however. For it is not the loss of a loved one that Dorfman grieves. The loss he is mourning is political. He is in mourning because of the result of a political referendum held in Chile in 2022. The grief Dorfman, and many others, experienced is a form of political grief. This may seem strange, but the phenomenon may be more common than we think. María Berta López Ríos We recently wrote a paper exploring this kind of experience of political grief, which arose out of our shared interest in the philosophy of emotions and the political situation in Chile. Our paper focuses on the expressions of mourning (like Dorfman’s) that followed the Chilean ref...
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Delusions and Conspiracy Theories

Today's blog post is by Katérine Aminot, Tara J. Ryan, and Alicia Nijdam-Jones who summarise their new paper, Delusion or conspiracy? , published in Criminal Justice and Behavior (2024). Katérine Aminot, Tara J. Ryan, and Alicia Nijdam-Jones It's critical to properly diagnose mental disorders, such as those that cause psychosis (e.g., schizophrenia; delusional disorder), in legal settings. In the United States and Canada, criminal defendants must not be experiencing symptoms of a mental health disorder that impacts their ability to understand and make rational decisions, otherwise they are likely to be found incompetent to proceed with their case. Incompetent defendants are typically court ordered to receive treatment (e.g., mental health medications) in order to be restored to competency before proceeding with their legal case. Delusional beliefs and conspiracy theories can look very similar. For instance, conspiracy theories and delusions both consist of odd beliefs that are...
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The Elusiveness of Hermeneutical Injustice in Psychiatric Categorizations

This blogpost is by Miriam Solomon on her recently published paper, ' The Elusiveness of Hermeneutical Injustice in Psychiatric Categorizations ' ( Social Epistemology , 2024). Miriam Solomon Miranda Fricker’s (2007) concept of “hermeneutical injustice” is a helpful critical tool for thinking about how improved social identities become available to those who can benefit from them. Fricker argues that dominant conceptual frameworks are often inadequate and unjust in that, for reasons of social prejudice, they get in the way of understanding important aspects of one’s own social experience. For example, during the 1950s, dominant stereotypes about male homosexuals—stereotypes that were both negative and inaccurate—prevented men who preferred sex with men from understanding their societal roles.  Fricker writes about the “Aha!” moment when a more accurate and positive social identity becomes available, correcting the hermeneutic injustice. Her examples include 1960s gay male iden...
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When Are Conspiracy Beliefs Pathological?

This week's contribution is from Joe Pierre on his paper Conspiracy Theory Belief: A Sane Response to an Insane World? ( Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 2023). Back in 2021, Ema Sullivan-Bissett invited me to participate in a multidisciplinary workshop at the University of Birmingham to tackle the question, “are conspiracy theory beliefs pathological?” While the workshop didn’t take place until the Spring of 2023, getting together to discuss the topic and hear lectures from philosophers and psychologists whose work I knew well, but had never met in person—like Lisa Bortolotti, Karen Douglas, Stephan Lewandowsky, Anna Ichino, and Kengo Miyazono—was well worth the wait. And in the meantime, Dr. Sullivan-Bissett also invited me to contribute to a special issue of the journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology on “Conspiratorial Ideation and Psychopathology.” Joseph Pierre For the article I wrote, I chose the title “Conspiracy Theory Belief: A Sane Response to an Insane World?...
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Folk Intuitions about Free Will: Falure to Understand Determinism and Motivated Cognition

Today's post is by Kiichi Inarimori (Hokkaido University) on his recent paper " Folk Intuitions About Free Will and Moral Responsibility: Evaluating the Combined Effects of Misunderstandings About Determinism and Motivated Cognition " ( Cognitive Science 2024), co-authored with Yusuke Haruki (The University of Tokyo) and Kengo Miyazono (Hokkaido University). Kiichi Inarimori Philosophers have long debated whether free will—a prerequisite for moral responsibility—is compatible with determinism. Central to these discussions are the intuitions people form when considering moral responsibility in hypothetical scenarios. Yusuke Haruki With the rise of experimental philosophy, numerous studies have explored folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. Some experiments suggest that people tend toward “compatibilism,” the view that free will and determinism can coexist, especially in concrete cases of wrongdoing. Others suggest a lean toward “incompatibilism,” th...
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The Manipulationist Threat to moral responsibility

Today's post is by Kristoffer Moody ( University of Edinburgh ) on his recent paper, " The Manipulationist Threat to moral responsibility " ( Synthese 2024). Kristoffer Moody We all have that one relative, let’s call him Antonio, who, at family gatherings, irritates us by expounding on how vaccines cause autism, that the election was stolen, or other strange, problematic, or offensive beliefs. While it’s tendentious whether or not we can hold Antonio responsible for holding those beliefs, it may seem clear that we can hold him responsible for acting on the basis of those beliefs. However, I claim using evidence from psychology that Antonio may have been manipulated in the formation of his belief. I claim, on the basis of evidence of our propensity towards choice-blindness, the ‘truth effect’, and confirmation bias, that we are far more susceptible to manipulation than we might pre-theoretically think, and that we appear to be particularly so susceptible via social medi...
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