Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Changsheng Lai (Shanghai Jiao Tong University).   Changsheng Lai You believe that you locked the door before you left your house, but do you really remember that? Your belief about the past episode might be true, but in what sense is the past episode genuinely remembered rather than being just accurately imagined or veridical confabulated? A popular view, which I refer to as ‘mnemic reliabilism’, suggests that the process of remembering is distinguished by its reliability condition. That is, successful remembering must be produced by a reliable memory process.  Prominent champions of this view include the simulationist Kourken Michaelian ( Michaelian 2016 ) and the causalist Markus Werning ( Werning 2020 ). Besides, you might also find mnemic reliabilism attractive if you are sympathetic to both the orthodox view that ‘remembering entails knowing’ and the idea that ‘knowledge requires reliability’. In my recent paper entitled ‘ Remembering requires no reliabili...

In today's post I report on the Summer School in Reichenau   which I had the pleasure to attend on 25th and 26th August 2023. The theme was Belief, meaning, knowledge: how we deal with uncertainty . Delusions was a topic often discussed in the presentations, from philosophical, phenomenological, and clinical perspectives. Organisers of the event were Johannes Rusch, Daniel Nischk, Dorothea Debus, and Thomas Müller. Rathaus Reichenau (front) Rathaus Reichenau (courtyard) The first speaker was Rico Gutschmidt (Konstanz) with a presentation on Mysticism and Delusions . Fundamental uncertainties are limitations of knowledge and experience and three questions arise: (1) Where do we come from? (2) Why there is anything at all rather than nothing? (3) Who are we? Although such questions are not easy to answer or possible to answer they can evoke transformative experiences. Philosophical experiences such as struggling with these questions can be transformative because they change the type...

This blog post is by Zsuzsanna Chappell. Zsuzsanna is an independent scholar and research associate at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics. She currently writes on the social philosophy and ethics of mental illness, and the role of researchers with subject-relevant lived experience in the human sciences. Previously, she held academic positions at the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester and is the author of Deliberative Democracy: A Critical Introduction , Palgrave 2012. Zsuzsanna reports from the third annual Philosophy of Psychiatry and Lived Experience workshop . The workshop was held on 17-18 April 2023, online (hosted by the University of Umeå). The aim of these workshops has been to bring together  philosophers and philosophy-adjacent scholars who self-identify as having lived experience of mental disability / difference, and are also writing on these topics.  Zsuzsanna Chappell Our first post d...

This blog post is by Zsuzsanna Chappell. Zsuzsanna is an independent scholar and research associate at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics. She currently writes on the social philosophy and ethics of mental illness, and the role of researchers with subject-relevant lived experience in the human sciences. Previously, she held academic positions at the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester and is the author of  Deliberative Democracy: A Critical Introduction , Palgrave 2012. Zsuzsanna reports from the third annual  Philosophy of Psychiatry and Lived Experience workshop . The workshop was held on 17-18 April 2023, online (hosted by the University of Umeå). The aim of these workshops has been to bring together  philosophers and philosophy-adjacent scholars who self-identify as having lived experience of mental disability / difference, and are also writing on these topics.  University of Umeå Zsuzs...

This post was published on the EPIC blog in July 2023. It is by Richard Hassall, a qualified clinical psychologist, now retired. After retirement, Richard enrolled at the University of Sheffield to do an MA in philosophy, followed by a PhD which was completed in 2022. At the time of writing, Richard is an affiliate researcher attached to the Department of Philosophy at Sheffield. Richard Hassall My area of interest is philosophy of psychiatry, with a particular interest in the nature of psychiatric diagnostic categories and the effect these have on the individuals who receive them. I argue in my PhD thesis that a psychiatric diagnosis may, in some cases, lead the recipient to becoming a victim of epistemic injustice, and specifically of hermeneutical injustice. I argue that this effect can be understood in terms of narrative theory and the self-narratives that individuals construct for themselves. People gain meaning in their lives through their self-narratives, but such narratives can...

Today's post is by  Chenwei Nie  on his recent paper, " Revisiting Maher’s one-factor theory of delusion " ( Neuroethics , 2023). Currently, he is a Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. Chenwei Nie Suppose your friend, Ava, is suffering from a delusional belief that her partner is replaced by an imposter. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary - such as the supposed imposter's identical appearance to her partner and knowledge of intimate details, and reassurances from you and her other friends - Ava steadfastly maintains this belief. In this unfortunate circumstance, it is obvious that something must have gone wrong in the formation and maintenance of Ava’s belief. It is likely that Ava would be diagnosed with the Capgras delusion. Unravelling what exactly has gone wrong, however, has proven challenging. According to a classic one-factor theory of delusion developed by Brendan Arnold Maher (1924-2009), the only factor, i.e. departure ...

Today's post is by Dan Degerman  on his recent paper, " Epistemic injustice, naturalism, and mental disorder: on the epistemic benefits of obscuring social factors " ( Synthese , 2023). Dan Degerman is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Bristol.  Dan Degerman Naturalistic understandings that frame human experiences and differences as biological dysfunctions constitute a major source of epistemic injustice in disease and disability, according to many philosophers. Epistemic injustice refers to injustices committed against people in their capacity as knowers. This occurs, for example, when someone is disbelieved because of their social identity or when a lack of suitable interpretive resources means that someone cannot make their experiences intelligible to themselves or others. Critics have argued that naturalistic understandings of human experiences and differences can lead to both kinds of epistemic injustice because they tend t...