Imperfect Cognitions

The British Library hosts an exhibition on fairy tales, which brings to the fore the common elements of folk tales across cultures, such as the fable as a way of advising the reader about how to live their lives, the plot as the battle between good and evil, magical powers as a way to transcend the limitations of human agency, and transformations as a reflection on identity. The Beast, Belle and her father in the classic tale of The Beauty and the Beast The exhibition starts with editions of the works by Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm gathered many folk tales from friends and family and put them in writing, preparing versions for adults and for children. Stories include Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. Perrault lived in France over 300 years ago and he is attributed Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. Edition of Brothers Grimm fairy tales One section of the exhibition concerns villains, and features prominently giants, goblins, stepmothers, ...

On 20th March 2026, at the Exchange in Birmingham, we held a workshop on Hearing Voices, Suicidality and AI psychosis, during Philosophy Fortnight. It was supported by University of Birmingham QR funding, the EPIC project, the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and the Birmingham network for Phenomenology and Mental Health.  Here we report here from the morning talks, which were all on philosophical perspectives on the phenomenon of AI psychosis. Speakers and organisers To begin the session, the first presenter,  Elisabetta Lalumera  (University of Bologna), discussed the use of the concept "AI psychosis". Instead of asking whether AI psychosis is a real thing, she asked whether we should introduce "AI psychosis" as a medical concept, and she carefully reviewed reasons for and against adopting this concept. The use of concepts can be evaluated on the basis of need, relevance, evidence, alternatives and trade-off. Elisabetta argued convincingly that there is no good reas...

This post is by Nathália de Ávila (University of Cologne). Nathália de Ávila Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts. It is on this ample nourishment that they multiply so enormously. […]  The spirits won’t starve, but we will perish. (Franz Kafka in a letter to Milena Jesenská) In 2025, the journal Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience reported the case of a 26-year-old woman with no prior history of psychosis or mania who believed she was communicating with her deceased brother through an AI chatbot. A review of her chat logs showed that the system consistently validated her delusions. After hospitalization and treatment with antipsychotic medication, her symptoms resolved. Three months later, however, she continued her immersive interactions with ChatGPT. How does Artificial Intelligence transform the culture of grief?  Whatever ghost is believed to be hiding in ChatGPT, it is a very specific type that differs from ...

This week's post is by Floriane Brunet (Service de pédopsychiatrie, CH de Saint Nazaire) and Christophe Gauld (Service de Psychopathologie du Développement de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent, Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant – Hospices Civils de Lyon).  Floriane Brunet  Christophe Gauld Today, growing attention is being directed toward self-diagnostic practices among teenagers, a trend that may legitimately be related to the notions of childism and epistemic injustice within adolescent psychiatry. These two notions provide insight into the multiple processes through which adolescents’ testimonies are silenced within Western societies. Becoming aware of this systemic invisibilization of singular adolescent experiences, as well as of the continuum of violence directed toward them, calls for renewed forms of adult engagement. How does this bundle of domination shape the way clinicians listen to adolescents lived experiences? How can the reception of self-diagnostic practices at this ag...

In this blog post, Lisa Bortolotti presents a special issue of Philosophical Psychology on Daniel Dennett's philosophy. Daniel Dennett It is difficult to think of a philosopher whose influence has been so pervasive as Daniel Dennett's. This is amply demonstrated by the fact that the terms he coined, the metaphors he created, and the thought experiments he devised have become instant classics, are part of everyone’s philosophical vocabulary, and still attract controversy and inspire new work. I have an enormous intellectual debt to Dennett. He was one of the main characters in my PhD dissertation, at the same time a villain (as I was arguing against a system's rationality being a constraint on the application of the intentional stance to the prediction of the system's behaviour) and a superhero (as I blindingly accepted his methodological rejection of philosophical exceptionalism).  It is a privilege, then, to be the editor of an issue of Philosophical Psychology dedica...

This post is by  Martina Rosola . Martina is a researcher in Philosophy of Language. Her main interest is the role of language in systems of injustice and how it can serve to either perpetuate or dismantle them. Within this perspective, she specialized in gender-fair language. Martina Rosola Evaluating gender-fair strategies in Italian Do you want to avoid the masculine generic and struggle to choose among the many gender-fair alternatives? This post is for you. Gender-fair language strategies abound and greatly differ from one another: some are hard for the reader, others for the writer; some aim to better represent women, others focus on non-binary people. But which one is “the best”? Being a philosopher, I cannot but reply “it depends”. If you have a word limit, visibility strategies, which repeat the masculine words in the feminine too (e.g., “lui o lei”, he or she), are counter-suggested. Innovative neutrality strategies substitute masculine words with neologisms (e.g., “lai”,...