Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Kamyab Ghorbanpour, Michał Klincewicz, Paris Mavromoustakos Blom and Pieter Spronck who recently published a paper entitled: " The Blind Gamer: Examining Ethical Agency Through Choice Blindness in Game Design " in Entertainment Computing . Kamyab Ghorbanpour When you ask someone why they chose to read a particular book, they will usually give you a story. It might be about how they came across it in a bookstore, how it was highly recommended by their friends, or how it resembled a book they had previously enjoyed. Regardless, they will provide a story, a story believed both by you and by themselves. But what if that story is untrue? What if they weren’t actually aware of why they chose that book? What if they were confabulating without even realizing it? Choice blindness shows that this is not an unlikely scenario. Research has demonstrated that people can make decisions without being fully aware of them—or, for lack of a better term, they think they know why ...

This week's blogpost is from Browyn Finnigan, associate professor at Australian National University, on her recent publication  Self-related processing removal or revision? The Buddhist theory of no-self and the mechanisms of mindfulness  in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.  Browyn Finnigan There is strong evidence that mindfulness helps reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. But scientists are less certain about the mechanisms behind these effects. Inspired by the Buddhist idea of anattā, or no-self, some suggest that mindfulness works by attenuating or reducing all senses of self. Proponents argue that mindfulness fosters disidentification from one’s experience and reduces rumination, which plays a significant role in anxiety and depression. They infer that the benefits of mindfulness arise from decreasing rumination through a reduction in all kinds of ‘self-related processing’ (SRP). Drawing on the research of Britton and Lindahl, I argue that there is little...

This week's blogpost is from Kasper Møller Nielsen, Julie Nordgaard, and Mads Gram Henriksen on their recent publication  Fundamental issues in epistemic injustice in healthcare  ( Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy , 2025).  Kasper Møller Nielsen, Julie Nordgaard, and Mads Gram Henriksen In this blogpost, we sketch some key points from our recent article “Fundamental issues in epistemic injustice in healthcare” ( Nielsen et al., 2025 ), calling for more conceptual clarity, methodological rigor, and empirically balanced claims in this research field. In the article, we focus on Miranda Fricker’s ( 2007 , p. 28) concept of testimonial injustice, which she defines as a person receiving “a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice in the hearer”. In our context, testimonial injustice is a form of transactional injustice, i.e., an injustice occurring in patient-clinician relations.  We report, to our own surprise and dismay, that core claims about epistemic ...

Today we welcome Steven Gubka, a postdoctoral associate at the Humanities Research Center at Rice University, to share his recent paper: " How Anger Helps Us Possess Reasons for Action " ( The Philosophical Quarterly ).   Steven Gubka   Recall the last time that you got angry at someone. Did it help or hinder your decision-making about how you should treat them? Seneca, a stoic philosopher of ancient Rome, argued that anger makes it more difficult to deliberate correctly about what to do. He wrote that “it causes whoever has come into its clutches to forget his duty: make a father angry, he’s an enemy; make a son angry, he’s a parricide. Anger makes a mother a stepmother, a fellow-citizen a foreign enemy, a king a tyrant” (2010: pg. 16).  Here Seneca claims that anger prevents us from appreciating moral reasons to avoid harming people, even those that we have special obligation to protect. This idea of tension between anger and reason remains commonplace, and as a result,...

This post is by Richard Hassall. Richard Hassall Diagnosis, as the identification of the disease afflicting the patient, is a central element in modern medicine. However, a diagnosis is more than just a statement defining a disease and aiming to guide treatment. It can also have other important social and other consequences for its recipient, beyond acting as a hypothesis for the purpose of treatment. Thus, sociologists of medicine have observed that diagnoses can function to define the sick role in social contexts and authorise medical social control in various ways (e.g. Jutel, 2017 ; McGann, 2011 ). In a paper forthcoming in Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , I argue that the act of delivering a medical diagnosis creates an institutional fact. I make use of Austin's (1962) speech act theory to argue that the statement of a diagnosis is both an illocutionary and a perlocutionary speech act. The announcement by the physician of a diagnosis is not simply a factual statement abou...

This post is by Konrad Banicki and Peter Zachar. Book cover Personality disorders are among the most contentious topics in clinical psychology and psychiatry. Thus, it is surprising to see how little attention has been paid to this domain within the philosophy of psychiatry. In our recently published book Conceptualizing Personality Disorder: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychological Science, and Psychiatry (Cambridge University Press, 2025) we set out to potentially alter the scholarly landscape by encouraging philosophers to tackle the complicated issue of personality disorder. We also wanted to invite psychologists and psychiatrists to participate in the task of bringing more philosophy to personality disorders.   One of the contexts for this volume is a loss of confidence in the neo-Kraepelinian categorical model under whose guidance personality disorders gained renewed importance in psychiatry with the publication of the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical ...

This post is by Ruby Hake (University of Birmingham), one of the authors of 'Autism and Gender', a chapter in a volume forthcoming for Routledge,  Contemporary Philosophy of Autism . The chapter offers an in-depth discussion of essentialism and argues that critical phenomenology is well placed to prevent this issue going forward. Ruby Hake Essentialism has been a problem in autism and gender diversity research from the beginning. For example, the biological-essentialist theory of the extreme male theory of autism ( Baron-Cohen 2002 ; 2012 ) has been used to explain the prevalence of autistic trans men ( Murphy et al. 2020 ; Nobili et al. 2018 ; Kung 2020 ). The theory cannot explain the prevalence of autistic trans women, however, and ignores the experiences of non-binary autistic people.  It has also been common in medical literature to argue that “symptoms” of autism, such as ‘black and white thinking’, ‘obsessions’, ‘developmental rigidity’ etc. can cause gender dyspho...

Today's post is by Jodie Russell (University of Birmingham) who is addressing self-illness ambiguity. Jodie Russell In a recent paper titled “ Prescriptive ‘selves’ and self-illness ambiguity ” ( Synthese 2025), I explain the phenomenon of self-illness ambiguity and argue that individuals who experience these ambiguities might feel a particular form of social isolation. Self-illness ambiguities occur when people struggle to determine whether a thought, feeling, or behaviour is due to their illness (specifically, a mental disorder) or due to who they are as a person (i.e. stemming from their self). For example, someone with depression might find it difficult to tell whether their sadness after being let down by a friend is a symptom of their depression or a response rooted in their personal history of being let down by others. As Sadler (2004) describes, mental disorder can saturate or transform a person’s relationship to the world, and this transformation can be valuable in itsel...

This post is by Alejandro Vázquez del Mercado , Professor of Philosophy at UNAM (Mexico’s National Autonomous University), where he coordinates the Seminar of Cognitive Diversity.   Alejandro Vázquez del Mercado Bereavement deeply affects every aspect of life, but reflections on its epistemic impact are comparatively scarce in philosophy.  In my view, the best way to think about this is in terms of epistemic functionality, a core notion from the Epistemic Innocence framework that I’ve found extremely fruitful. When evaluating epistemic functioning, the focus is not on the degree of justification possessed by the beliefs of the bereaved, but on the person’s ability to regularly acquire epistemic goods, such as true beliefs, evidence, and understanding.  Bereavement studies provide an important starting point to understand how the death of someone close is epistemically disruptive. The ambivalence and dissonance pertaining to the fact that the deceased is no longer pr...

This week's blogpost is from Adam Blehm (Biblical Worldview Director at Rejoice Christian School) on his recent publication  The Viciousness of Psychological Resilience ( Phenomenology of Cognitive Sciences, 2025).  Adam Blehm Generally speaking, psychological resilience seems to be a good thing. By  psychological resilience I mean something like a psychological disposition that enables  us to cope with difficult things in life. Resilience is thus a good thing because it helps us  live our lives without being upended with debilitating psychological distress. Positive psychologists have identified several traits that appear to make one  more resilient. One of the key characteristics of resilient people is that they tend to  exemplify what psychologists Southwick and Charney call “acceptance.” Essentially  “acceptance” refers to the disposition to accept the “reality of our situation, even if that  situation is frightening or painful.” If we a...

This week we are happy to have Christophe Gauld and colleagues presenting a recent paper investigating philosophical conceptual competence among French psychiatrists.  Christophe Gauld A recent international study published in L’Encéphale aim to offer an overview of how psychiatry residents and psychiatrists in France relate to conceptual and philosophical aspects of their discipline. Based on responses from 353 participants, the survey highlights a strong endorsement (over 90%) for integrating philosophy into psychiatry curricula, with a more cautious self-assessment of conceptual confidence.   This result highlights a situation where interest and perceived importance coexist with limited perceived preparedness. While 80% support the development of specific conceptual skills, many respondents report uncertainty or limited familiarity with the relevant philosophical frameworks. Such findings suggest that the place of conceptual reflection in psychiatric training remains poten...

In this post, Katja Crone and Max Gab (TU Dortmund) present the Special Issue “Minimal Forms of Shared Intentionality,” which they recently guest-edited for  Philosophical Psychology . Max Gab Shared intentionality is a ubiquitous, fundamental, and multifaceted phenomenon. People act together, share thoughts, beliefs, and emotional states. It lies at the heart of basic human capacities like joint attention, communication, and social cognition. The concept is also used to explain higher-level forms of human organization, such as corporate agency, political communities, and even monetary systems. This has led to a sprawling field of research that combines ideas and methods from various disciplines, including developmental and evolutionary psychology, neurosciences, phenomenology, and classical analytical approaches in philosophy.  While debates about shared intentionality have been productive, established approaches to explain it also face problems that motivate an investigati...

This post is by Carme Isern-Mas and Ivar R. Hannikainen whose paper , "Self-Deception: A Case Study in Folk Conceptual Structure", was recently published open access in  Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Carme and Ivar In the first episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , successful New York lawyer Rebecca Bloom bumps into her ex-boyfriend Josh Chan, who announces he is moving back to his hometown in California. Impulsively, Rebecca quits her job and follows him. Although she claims this is simply to live near the beach, it is clear to the audience that she is really hoping to win Josh back. Does Rebecca’s case count as self-deception? As with many other concepts in analytic philosophy, this hinges on how different features or conditions shape the concept of self-deception. Intentionalists argue that self-deception requires the agent to intend to deceive themselves, often starting from an unwelcome true belief. On this view, Rebecca must knowingly suppress her true motive and deli...

This post is by Chenwei Nie  (University of Warwick). In this post, Chenwei discusses a proposal detailed in his new chapter, "Why rational people obstinately hold onto irrational beliefs: A new approach", to appear in a book entitled Epistemic Dilemmas and Epistemic Normativity ( Routledge). Chenwei Nie In the middle of this brutal summer, with scorching heatwaves across Europe, Asia, and North America, it is poignant that so many believe that climate change is not real. Nearly 15% of Americans believe it is not real ( Gounaridis & Newell, 2024 ), and among the members of the 118th US Congress, almost a quarter share this belief, who are all Republicans ( So, 2024 ). Even more alarming, climate change denial is just one example in a much broader, unsettling set of irrational beliefs, including but not limited to cases of superstitious, religious, political, and conspiratorial beliefs. The burning question is: Why do people obstinately hold onto irrational beliefs in the ...

Today's post is by Themistoklis Pantazakos, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at the American College of Greece and Visiting Professor of Parenting and Special Education at KU Leuven. His research regards the philosophy of psychiatry, particularly issues of evidence based diagnosis, as well as phenomenological psychiatry and the use of client expertise in psychotherapy. In this post, he discusses the themes of his recent BJPsych editorial . Themistoklis Pantazakos For seventy years psychiatry has hunted biological markers to anchor its diagnoses in hard science. From brain imaging to genomics, each new tool promised parity with the rest of medicine, yet no major mental disorder has a specific biomarker. This gap feeds two linked accusations: psychiatric categories don’t track real diseases, and, without biomarkers, psychiatrists wield excessive, culturally loaded authority, sometimes inflating pathology in step with pharmaceutical incentives. Critics imply that bioma...

On 17 June at the University of Birmingham, Kathleen Murphy-Hollies organised a workshop on conspiracy theories and storytelling with a stellar line-up. This post is a report of the event. The workshop is part of a project called "Film, Storytelling and Conspiracies" funded by a University of Birmingham Research Incubator Hub. Conspiracy theories online First talk was by Catarina Dutilh Novaes (VU Amsterdam) and was entitled "Conspiratorial Beliefs and Conspiracy Fantasies: Engaging with Wu Ming 1". The premise for the talk was that many think that conspiracy beliefs are on the rise and affect our political choices ("vibes-based politics"). One idea by Napolitano (2021) is that attempts to debunk conspiratorial beliefs with facts, evidence, and rational arguments do not work. Catarina aimed to respond to Napolitano. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Wu Ming (in Mandarin, "No Name") is a collective originating in Bologna, a group of writers active in liter...