Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Dan Stein (University of Cape Town) who writes about his new book, Problems of Living (Elsevier, 2021). It seems to me hard to practice psychiatry without asking some key “big questions”, both about the nature of the mind (and mental illness) in particular, and about the nature of life (and mental suffering) in general. More than a decade ago I published a volume, Philosophy of Psychopharmacology , in which I addressed some of the “hard problems” faced by mental health clinicians, with a particular focus on philosophical issues raised or addressed by advances in psychiatric medication.  This year I’ve published my second volume at the intersection of psychiatry and philosophy,  Problems of Living , in which I look at a range of “hard problems” raised by life as a whole, with a particular focus on philosophical issues raised or addressed by advances in the cognitive-affective sciences including psychology and neuroscience. I view my approach in both o...

On 15th October at Hornton Grange Matthew Broome , director of the Institute for Mental Health  in Birmingham, chaired the book launch of Delusions in Context (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), a collection of four new papers on delusions. The book is truly interdisciplinary, featuring authors with a background in psychiatry, lived experience, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy, and is available open access on the Springer website . I edited the book. At the launch, I explained how the book fits with the work we have been doing as part of project PERFECT . In the project one of the objectives is to examine whether beliefs that we consider as epistemically irrational (either not supported by existing evidence, or resistant to new counter-evidence) can nonetheless have some benefits for the person who adopts such beliefs. Benefits could be cashed out in terms of increased wellbeing or reduced anxiety, enhanced motivation to pursue epistemic goals, or better performance i...