Imperfect Cognitions

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...

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...

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?...

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...