Respect for People with (Permanently) Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Oliver Sensen (pictured above), Associate Professor in Philosophy at Tulane University in New Orleans. Oliver is interested in the question of how one should treat others, and, more particularly, in the notion of respect for persons. Much of his work is on Kant – since he is the one who thought most deeply about these issues – including his notions of dignity, autonomy, and respect. In this post Oliver summarises his recent article 'Respect Towards Elderly Demented Patients', published in Diametros.

As part of a more systematic project on respect, I have started to think about the regard that is owed to people with imperfect cognitions. The paper I summarise in this post focuses on respect for elderly demented patients. Imagine that you are a caregiver for a patient who does not remember what happened yesterday. If, for instance, her husband died years ago, she still might ask you when he will come back to see her. Telling her the truth might deeply upset her. Would you be disrespectful in withholding the husband’s death, because in that case you are not treating her as a normal human adult, or would you be disrespecting her condition by telling the truth (see also Lisa Bortolotti's post on Dementia and the Truth).

My broader project is to develop a more wholesome and inclusive account of respect. We believe that animals and the environment more generally deserve respect, but this creates a problem for third-personal views (which ground respect in a feature the other possesses, such as rationality or sentience), and second-personal views (which regard respect as a mutual recognition of equals). A first-personal account (according to which respect is a general attitude one should have regardless), on the other hand, has the advantage that it can justify a universal scope of respect; furthermore, it can explain more easily why one is motivated and obligated to respect others. Finally, there is no shortage of justification for such an account, since it can be supported by reasons from virtue ethicists, consequentialists, and deontologists alike.

In addition, a first-personal justification of respect can capture our intuition that one should respect the other for who she is. Should one hold open the door for a disabled person? It depends. If she wants to show that she can do it herself, it might be disrespectful to help. If, on the other hand, she is not able to open the door herself, it might be disrespectful not to assist. Furthermore, it matters what my specific relationship to the other is. If a demented patient speaks to her doctor or banker, we do not believe that they are allowed to lie – depending on the patient’s legal status – in order to avoid distress. However, the primary task of a caregiver is to make the patient safe and comfortable. This does not condone lying, but there does not seem to be a duty to tell harsh truths ('your husband will never come back'). There can be reasons to respect imperfect cognitions.

Delusions in the DSM 5

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti. How has the definition of delusions changed in the DSM 5? Here are some first impressions. In the DSM-IV (Glossary) delusions were defined as follows: Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.

Rationalization: Why your intelligence, vigilance and expertise probably don't protect you

Today's post is by Jonathan Ellis , Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Public Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Eric Schwitzgebel , Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. This is the first in a two-part contribution on their paper "Rationalization in Moral and Philosophical thought" in Moral Inferences , eds. J. F. Bonnefon and B. Trémolière (Psychology Press, 2017). We’ve all been there. You’re arguing with someone – about politics, or a policy at work, or about whose turn it is to do the dishes – and they keep finding all kinds of self-serving justifications for their view. When one of their arguments is defeated, rather than rethinking their position they just leap to another argument, then maybe another. They’re rationalizing –coming up with convenient defenses for what they want to believe, rather than responding even-handedly to the points you're making. Yo...

A co-citation analysis of cross-disciplinarity in the empirically-informed philosophy of mind

Today's post is by Karen Yan (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University) on her recent paper (co-authored with Chuan-Ya Liao), " A co-citation analysis of cross-disciplinarity in the empirically-informed philosophy of mind " ( Synthese 2023). Karen Yan What drives us to write this paper is our curiosity about what it means when philosophers of mind claim their works are informed by empirical evidence and how to assess this quality of empirically-informedness. Building on Knobe’s (2015) quantitative metaphilosophical analyses of empirically-informed philosophy of mind (EIPM), we investigated further how empirically-informed philosophers rely on empirical research and what metaphilosophical lessons to draw from our empirical results. We utilize scientometric tools and categorization analysis to provide an empirically reliable description of EIPM. Our methodological novelty lies in integrating the co-citation analysis tool with the conceptual resources from the philosoph...

Imperfect Cognitions

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