Imperfect Cognitions

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...