Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Veronica Valle, philosopher of perception and of the cognitive sciences, who recently completed a doctoral project at the University of Macau. Here she discusses some of her work on the Moral Roots of Quarantine project . Veronica Valle The war metaphor has been largely dominating the public discourse around the COVID-19 pandemics worldwide, with many voices having highlighted the potential and factual negative effects of such a rhetoric. Our paper focuses on one aspect that has been overlooked: the interplay between deeply rooted gender stereotypes and the use of the war metaphor. We carried out an investigation of the embedded use of gender-specific images in the war narrative that characterized the anti-pandemic public discourse in Italy during the first wave. By employing textual semiotics and theories in pragmatics, we analyze a relevant selection of texts (e.g., social advertising ads, newspaper articles, statements made by politicians, etc.). The results o...

In today's post, I interview Nevia Dolcini , philosopher of mind based at the University of Macau, on the project The Moral Roots of Quarantine. Nevia Dolcini Lisa Bortolotti: What did you set out to investigate in the project The Moral Roots of Quarantine? Nevia Dolcini: The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic prompted a series of unprecedented events worldwide. As an Italian living in Macau, I first witnessed the effects of the Wuhan outbreak, and I later experienced the first wave and consequent lockdown in Italy. I was bewildered by my observations of the wide-ranging public reactions to the same emergency. For instance, while masks in Macau were accepted since the first day into the pandemic, in Italy their efficacy was questioned at length. Interestingly, the pandemic discourses across East and West were highly ‘moralized’. These observations inspired the project “ The Moral Roots of Quarantine ”, funded by the Macau S.A.R. Government Higher Education Fund, which sets out to carry ...

This post is by  Gabriele Contessa . Gabriele is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. His research interests lie at the intersection of social epistemology, philosophy of science, and political philosophy. He is currently working on a book in which he develops and defends a social approach to public trust in science. Gabriele Contessa When it comes to specialized knowledge, most of us depend on experts. If we’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with our car, we take it to a mechanic, when we are sick, we go to a doctor, and, when it’s time to file our taxes, we hire a tax accountant. But how can we choose which experts to trust without either becoming experts ourselves or falling prey to quacks, shams, or other pseudo-experts? The standard answer is that, when selecting experts, we should carefully consider the evidence for and against their trustworthiness. This might include examining the expert’s credentials, inquiring about their reput...

This post is by Eleanor Harris. Eleanor Harris is a Philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, funded by the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. Her research explores Delusions, Epistemic Injustice, and Epistemic Vigilance. Here, she provides a report on The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry's (AAPP) annual conference.   AAPP conference poster 2022 The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) held their 33rd annual conference on 21st-22nd May 2022 at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans, Louisiana. Unlike previous years’ conferences that had a set theme which was narrower in focus, the theme for this year’s annual conference was open to all topics that address either philosophical issues that are relevant to psychiatry, or psychiatric issues with relevance to philosophy. Over two days there were a total of 19 talks, on a wide range of topics such as psychiatric euthanasia, policing and the prod...

Today's post is by Rosa Ritunnano (University of Birmingham and Melbourne), consultant psychiatrist and PhD candidate at the Institute for Mental Health, Birmingham, UK. Here she talks her recent paper which has been awarded the 2021 Wolfe Mays Essay Prize for Early Career Researchers by The British Society for Phenomenology (BSP) and the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (JBSP).  Rosa Ritunnano In this paper, I argue that the adoption of a critical phenomenological stance may improve conditions of hermeneutical marginalisation as experienced by individuals who have attracted a diagnosis of psychosis (although I believe that the suggested approach can be transferrable to other conditions). In cases of hermeneutical injustice , one is unable to understand their own experience or effectively communicate it to others because they lack an adequate conceptual framework for making sense of this experience. The classic example used in the literature on hermeneutical injust...

In today's post I interview Åsa Wikforss about her Knowledge Resistance  program. Åsa is a professor of theoretical philosophy at Stockholm University, whose research sits at the intersection of philosophy of mind, language and epistemology. Åsa Wikforss Kathleen Murphy-Hollies : Hi Åsa. First of all, could you talk a little bit about what the knowledge resistance project is about and what kind of key questions it addresses? Åsa Wikforss : So it's a large cross disciplinary program with about 30 researchers involved. The full name is ‘Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences and Cures’, and we investigate knowledge resistance from four different disciplinary angles. Philosophically, we do the foundational work of spelling out what we are even talking when we’re talking about knowledge resistance. At a first approximation, we say it's a kind of irrational resistance to evidence, but there's a lot to unpack there. What is the evidence? What kind of irrationality? What ...

In this post, Jessica Sutherland (University of Birmingham), Kathleen Murphy-Hollies (University of Birmingham), and Sean Shields (University of Nottingham) report on their two-day conference “Philosophy at the Intersection of Moral Responsibility, Agency, and Regulation”. This conference was held in-person (with online provisions) at the University of Birmingham on 9th-10th May 2022. The conference brought together graduate students and early-career researchers working in the areas of moral responsibility, agency and regulation of behaviour broadly construed.   Day 1 The first keynote talk of the conference was given by Dr Anneli Jefferson (Cardiff University) on “What’s the Point of Blaming the Dead?”. Jefferson offered some reflections on how current discussions of the role of blame do not seem to capture the ways in which we blame the dead. Jefferson offered a prototype theory of blame and argued that blaming the dead is not a paradigmatic case as it does not include some of ...